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HANDS UP! 


BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

THE LOST CABIN-MINE 
THE ISLAND PROVIDENCE 
A WILDERNESS OF MONKEYS 
ABOVE YOUR HEADS 
DEAD MEN’S BELLS 
MY LADY PORCELAIN 


HANDS UP! 

BY 

PREDERICK NIVEN 


NEW YORK 

THE JOHN LANE COMl^ANY 

MCMXIII 





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CONTENTS 


CHAP. PAGE 

I Why I WENT West 7 

II At Black Kettle 25 

III The Cowboy Philosopher 45 

IV News from Home 56 

V Government Bonds 68 

VI Diamond K 76 

VII Apache is Sentenced 85 

Vm At the Hollow Tree 105 

IX Alias Bill 124 

X Apache Talks 135 

XI Buck Johnson 144 

XH Jake’s Wife 157 

XIH Two Troopers 167 

XIV Cow-Sense 179 

XV Ag’in the Government 193 

XVI Our Special Correspondent 199 

XVH Another Convert 212 

XVIH The Return of Apache 219 

XIX The Hurdy-Gurdy 225 

XX Buck Returns 229 

XXI Set a Thief— 240 

XXH At the Hole in the Wall 249 


VI 


CONTENTS 


CHAP. PACE 

XXIII A Deputy Sheriff Hits the Trail 265 

XXIV Room Thirteen 279 

XXV Pete Discourses 289 

XXVI The Outlaw Bull 303 

XXVII At the Pueblo Wall 308 

XXVIII Epilogue 316 


CHAPTER I 

WHY I WENT WEST 

There has been a good deal of talk, one way 
or another, about the Apache Kid. The Yellow 
Press made capital out of him just as they have 
made capital out of many another figure on 
the frontier — Texas Jack, Wild Bill Hickok, 
Calamity Jane. 

Now, I knew the Apache Kid. I was mixed 
up in the last wild days of his life, and, while 
not seeking to white-wash him, I should like 
to tell — ^to all whom it may concern — my view 
of that extraordinary man. 

It is common knowledge that he was liked. 
Not only cowboys and miners who knew him, 
but your moneyed person, your capitalist even, 
can find a sigh for Apache Kid, the hold-up man. 
I have known two men, prominent, respected, 
one “ interested in mines,” the other a great 
ranch -owner and dabbler in booms, both of 
whom had met Apache in their travels about 
the West. Both spoke of him with regret,, 
with much more of a shake of the head over 
his misguided, or rudderless life, and his wild 
end, than with the “ jolly good riddance ” air 
that might be expected. There was reason for it. 

I had better, to begin with, explain how I 
came to the sage-brush countryof theApacheKid^ 
because, in a new country, the men one meets 
there have had some concussion (good or bad) 
in their lives to boast them so far. And the 
7 


8 


HANDS UP ! 

reason for their being in the new country is a 
kind of striking of the pitch-fork to get their 
key. 

That beginning of things I must tell quite 
frankly, bolstering myself up to the explanation 
by the thought that most young men — ^boj^s, let 
me say — ^for I was but a boy (and though 1 say 
“ most young men ” I am talking of myself !) 
have a kind of what the Scots call “ daftness ” 
in them, and are generally exceedingly sorry for 
themselves, magnificent in their woes and grandi- 
loquent in their hopes. 

I had wanted, in the old country, to be a 
sheep-farmer. My mother had, however, coaxed 
me to go in for a scholarship at my school. We 
spent our summer holidays, 1 remember, that 
year, after I had sat for the examination, in the 
Isle of Arran in the Firth of Clyde, an island 
that appeals to the youngster because of its 
moors, its cliffs and corries, its high rocks and 
adders in the heather. 

All through that vacation I was out and about 
on the hills with the shepherd and working in the 
dips. My father would come and watch me 
clutch adroitly a sheep by the horns, swing my 
leg over it and straddle it to the tank, plunge 
it in, walk alongside, yank it up at the end, and 
send it down to the pen among the other baptised 
ones. I say this not sacrilegiously now, but 
recalling an unfortunate expression used at 
the time. 

My mother (bless her) was of the old school, 
and had had hopes that I might become a minister 


WHY I WENT WEST 9 

of the gospel, which several boyish escapades 
had dashed. My father and she had little in 
common ; and one day, as he watched us working 
in the dips, my mother came along, under her 
sunshade, from the farm and stood looking on, 
half -sad, half-proud. My father was wholly 
proud of me at the moment, because I had 
pinioned a particular recalcitrant ram between 
my knees, and, wriggle his head as he would, I 
was his master. The farm-boys stopped to laugh 
and egg me on — just as I have seen, since then, 
cowboys roar with laughter when some branded 
two-year -old (who slipped through unbranded at 
one-year) has arisen and made a disturbance 
in a corral. 

My father turned about, and, seeing my mother, 
gave his sniff that prefaced a jocular remark and 
said he ; 

‘‘ I think you’d better be glad that the boy 
can baptise sheep instead of mortals.” 

My mother stiffened under the sunshade, 
held it up rigidly over her head instead of 
letting it make a pretty circle behind her head 
and shoulders. She walked sadly back to the 
farm and wrote a letter straightway to her 
minister, asking him his views on sheep -farming 
for a young man. The parson wrote back 
that sheep -farming was a lazy life. 

My father was a queer old fellow. He was 
a determined enough man, but very “ jack easy ” 
as the word is. He would dismiss things with 
a “ Pshaw — don’t worry me,” just when the 
looker-on expected him to fight to the end for his 


10 HANDS UP ! 

own view, would give his shoulders a dismissing 
shrug and retire to the library to read his “ Don 
Quixote ” in Spanish, with his feet on the 
mantelpiece. 

When this letter arrived my mother handed 
it to him and he read it with eyes widening 
and widening, held it in a trembling hand and 
bellowed out : 

“ What has he got to do with it ? Perfect 
nonsense ! What a woman ! What a woman ! 
He’s a shepherd of souls that — ^that — ^that — 
parson ! V^at does he know about mutton ? ” 

And then my dad seemed to listen to the echo 
of his voice and, alas, saw the humour of his 
remark. He sat back and laughed at himself, 
then got up, flicked the letter, said : “Far 
better give the boy a chance. I wish my father 
had let me follow my instincts — ” and retired 
to smoke many cigars and read “ Don Quixote ” 
in the Spanish. 

But evidently he could not settle. I think, 
looking back on him, that he tried too much to 
dismiss things instead of to mend them. He 
had, nevertheless, quite an ordeal of it dis- 
missing that letter. It came on a Friday 
and all Saturday he was glum and on Sunday so 
glum that he spent the forenoon yarning with 
the stable-boy and the ploughman. To my 
great delight, from where I sat (glum as he, before 
the farmhouse) I saw him dancing and snapping 
his fingers, explaining some Spanish dance to the 
farm hands. They looked upon this townsman, 
spending his summer vacation with them, as 


WHY I WENT WEST 11 

a “great card.” He had spent his younger 
days partly in Chili, in the nitrate business, partly 
in the Argentine, and lived a deal in the past. 
He was now giving them an exhibition of some 
Spanish dance ; and presently he began to 
sing, in response to some request from the stable- 
boy, a Spanish song. 

My mother came out and looked at him sadly. 
I was old enough to see both sides — to see that, 
in one way, my dad was making a motley of 
himself for these boys. But, at the same time, 
he was having what, out West, we would call 
“ a good time.” He was enjoying his summer 
vacation. 

The trouble was that it was Sunday ; and my 
mother thought he had been better employed 
singing a psalm to the boys — and he knew that 
she thought that, when, looking across the 
stableyard, he caught her eyes. Result : he 
sniffed twice, blew his nose loudly and retired 
quite inside the stable where the boys followed — 
and sang, a little more quietly, another Spanish 
song a little more extravagant. Also my 
mother wept just two tears, and no more, and 
retired to the garden seat with the New Testa- 
ment. 

That Sunday was to me a long, long day, for 
on the Monday I expected to have news of the 
scholarship and I hoped, most ardently, that I 
had not won. But Monday was a long day too 
— ^because news did not come. 

I know nothing in life worse than waiting. 
To act is good ; to rest is good ; to loaf is good. 


12 HANDS UP ! 

But to wait, to wait is horrible, undermining, 
breaking-down. 

The post box, for the old country, was, in the 
Isle of Arran, very primitive. We might have 
been in the last ranch of the West so far as 
the post box went — ^for it was merely an old 
mustard box covered with zinc on which the 
Highland rain played tip-tap between blinks 
of sun, an old mustard box on top of a stake 
driven into a bank at the roadside, just 
where the cart track to the farm debouched 
from the fine road that runs round the 
island. 

My father walked down with me on Monday, 
Tuesday, Wednesday, walked down eager and 
impatient. He had his own mail to expect, of 
course, but I know he was eager about that letter 
ioT me. 

Even on Wednesday it did not come. He 
had, however, a large mail of his own and among 
it some newspapers. He slipped his letters into 
his inside pocket to read afterwards and, with 
his walking-stick under his left arm, opened 
a newspaper, held it wide, scanned the pages, 
irowned under his hanging brows, puffed his 
moustache, pouted, and bent bis head. I 
thought some speculation had gone agee ; but 
no — he handed me the paper and pointed. 

The newspapers had received the list of 
prize-winners before the letter announcing my 
place had come to me. Yes — I had won a 
scholarship. My name looked out on me, in 
hard print, from among the tw^enty under the 


WHY I WENT WEST la 

heading, “ Result of the School 

Bursary Examination.” 

My father said not a word — just tapped my 
shoulder twice lightly with his walking-stick, 
then put it back under his arm, folded his hands 
behind his back, and walked up hill looking 
at the pieces of Macadamised rock glittering[in 
the road. 

You see,” said he at length, after a long 
pause, “ your mother had hoped that Jack 
would go in for some profession at home.” 

Jack was my elder brother, and he had gone 
to the Panama Canal first of all, then left the 
canal to embark in the rubber business in 
Guatemala, then left that and gone to Venezuela 
where he was now, according to his letters, 
managing a horse ranch. Spanish was a 
language my mother looked upon with regret ; 
for Spanish had carried my brother to all these 
places. 

Well,” said I to my father, “ I would rather 
be in Jack’s place than in a university.’* 

Up we trudged a few yards more and my 
father merely sniffed. 

“Yes,” he said at last, “yes, I quite under- 
stand. Well — ^well — you may learn engineering 
eventually. And engineering needs education. 
And engineering can take a man to the ends of 
the earth if he wants to go.” 

Of course I jumped at that idea — anywhere, 
anywhere out of the world of crowds ! 

Up we came to the farm and my father handed 
over the mail that had come for my mother. 


14 


HANDS UP ! 

“ Has Will had no letter ? ” asked my mother, 
as she took the bundle. 

My father smiled and shook his head. Then 
he prepared to give her a surprise with the 
newspaper, sniff-sniffing and glancing at it to get 
his finger on the place to spring it on her. She 
liked what she called “ pleasant surprises,’* and 
he liked to surprise her pleasantly. 

She opened a certain letter first, curious, 
womanlike, because she did not know the hand- 
writing. 

“ I don’t know this writing,” she said, 
turning it over and over. 

“ Well, bless my heart, my dear, why not 
open it ? ” said my father. “ Eh ? What ? ” 
and sniffed, and got his finger to the list of 
Bursary winners. 

My mother opened the letter, and one in her 
handwriting dropped out. She let it fall, 
looking puzzled, and there it lay — for her strained 
face held our gaze. She read the letter, let it 
fall, sat down on the seat before the door and 
stared into vacancy. My father cried out : 

“ What ? What ? What ? Not that ! Not 
that ! Not that ! ” 

He had an intuitive sense, or quickness of 
perception, of the kind called Celtic. He lifted 
the letter and read it. But he had little need 
to do so. He had known, looking on my mother, 
that it was to tell of the death of my elder 
brother ; and his jaw went tight. Slowly, 
stiffly, his head rose and he looked up at the sky 
and, in a voice I shall never forget, he said : 


WHY I WENT WEST 15 

“ Oh, God ! And he was a man ! He was 
a man ! I shall never forgive you — God I ** 

“ Oh, John ! John I Come to me ! ” cried 
my mother. “ John ! ” (my father’s name) 
“ take care John ! ” 

But my father was walking to and fro in the 
yard at a quick step as if on a quarter-deck. He 
walked to the gate that led to the road down 
hill ; he walked to the gate that led to the moors ; 
to and fro, to and fro. 

The people who owned the farm-steading 
came to peep and look. In a near field the 
farmer stood, rake upheld, transfixed, watching 
that march. From the door of the farm the old 
mother peeped. At the stable door there were 
faces. It was terrible. My father walked to 
and fro with his jaws locked and grim and his 
hands clenched. My mother ran after him 
clutching his shoulder and saying : 

“ John ! John ! Let your wife console you.” 

He turned once or twice in his walk and 
looked at her, but with no expression save a kind 
of puzzled one, as if he thought : “ Who is this ? 
Why does she hang on my steps ? ” 

Once I thought he was going to strike her and 
leapt forward to intercept ; but it was only a 
gesture of dismissing her that he had made ; and 
as I leapt forward he looked at me, and his eyes 
were so blank — looking at me as if I were a 
stock or stone — ^that I gave a choking blub in 
my chest. 

Suddenly my father cried out : 

“ And he was a man. Oh, God ! He was a 


16 


HANDS UP ! 

man ! ” and raised his fist to the heaven — and fell 
down in the yard. 

It is too painful for me to tell the rest ; but 
the end of my father was that he was led away 
from that farm where we had come on summer 
vacation, taken away like a little child, led by 
the hand of a man who had come from Renshaw 
Asylum for him. 

Having gone in for the scholarship, and won 
it, I now continued my studies, still in Glasgow. 
Home was very subdued and sad. A great 
gloom hung over it in which my poor mother 
moved like a withered leaf. I noticed, when I 
accompanied her to church — which I alw^ays 
did now, never inventing excuses for staying at 
home as had been my wont of old — ^that a new 
petition had come into the parson’s prayer : 
“ . . . and for those whose minds have been 
blinded we pray for light.” 

I think if I had looked into my heart during 
these months I should have been by way of 
flattering myself that I was an ideal son. Indeed, 
I think at times I did so look and see myself 
upon the stage of life as something of a heroic 
figure. Youth is histrionic. 

Sheep -farming was over ; in another month 
I would be sitting for a fresh examination ; 
If I came out near the top a Bursary would be 
mine again, carrying me on from the grammar 
school to our university ; if I came out a little 
lower I would have at least a scholarship. 
I was already looked upon by my class- 
mates as distinctly in the running ; and yet a 


WHY I WENT WEST IT 

university career was the last thing that my 
heart desired. 

When I passed Westward by Kelvinside and 
saw the towers of the university against the 
sunset they interested me well enough to carry 
the vision of them home in my mind so that I 
might make an impression of them in red chalk. 
From the exterior there was something airy, 
romantic, about these towers . After seeing them 
one evening, as I walked home, many raucous 
voices of a Salvation Army Choir fell harshly 
on my ears, the discords of cornet and tambourine, 
with the words, “Far, far away, like bells at 
sunset pealing,” and I wanted to take the 
choristers up to the end of Charing Cross and 
ask them to look on these towers as they dis- 
solved in the mists of night — so that they might 
understand something of the beauty of the words 
they sang. 

When I passed down University Gardens late 
one night from visiting a friend there, sudden, 
over me, there was a boom ; the half-hour 
had sounded. And I stood stock still in that 
broad, deserted thoroughfare, and listened to 
the waves of sound trembling into distance. 
That experience made me think of a meteoric 
stone fallen in the velvet purple of some lake 
and sending a circle of waves to the surrounding 
shores. As the words of the singers conjured up 
the misted towers, fading out so beautifully as 
to make me annoyed at their insulting discords, 
so the boom of the bell conjured up a picture. 
The art of words is not my forte ; but I consider, 

B 


18 HANDS UP ! 

thinking thus, how all the arts are one. To all 
this I have been led by speaking of the exterior 
of the University of Glasgow. 

As for the interior it had for me no attraction, 
and yet I was about to sit in an examination in 
a grand endeavour to achieve that for which I 
had no desire. So I saw myself, if not a 
“ greenery yallery, oh such a good young man ” 
as — in the phrase of old women — a “ good son.” 
Yes — there is no doubt that youth is histrionic. 

You will readily understand that a young man 
of such calibre as this had his calf-love ; and if 
the lady smiled, at times, a little on the sardonic 
side, I do not know that the young man was any 
the worse. He is the last, at the time, to perceive 
the sardonic dimples at the edges of his idol’s 
mouth. He will see to it that she remains for 
him the Holy Grail, the Light that never was 
on land or sea. She has her amusement, he his 
ideal ; and I think these things are well. 

I think women like things to be a little 
secretive ; an apple, if it be but a crab apple, 
is preferable to the luscious pear. Really, I do 
not think, looking back on that idyll from the 
sanity of middle age, that the secrecy of our 
meetings was essential ; but I do know, what- 
ever the cause. My Lady, with very solenm 
eyes, suggested to me the advisability of not 
calling too frequently at her home. I remember 
that, at the time, I used to marvel much how 
Fate cast us together, how frequently we, as it 
were bumped into one another, and I used to take 
it as a sign that Fate smiled upon us. 


WHY I WENT WEST 19 

But, looking back now, I remember that when 
I bumped into her — let me say at Queen Street 
Station — at two of a Saturday afternoon, she 
really had dropped, in conversation the preceding 
Monday, that she expected to be in town on 
Saturday afternoon. When I had made up my 
mind to visit the Institute of Fine Arts upon 
a Thursday evening, changed my mind and 
decided to go upon Friday, I think it quite 
probable that I really remembered the fact — 
before the changing of my mind and not after — 
the fact that she had said that she intended to 
go to see the pictures at the Fine Arts Institute 
on Friday evening because the band played on 
that night. 

On so much of my calf-love, then, do I look 
back with smiling tolerance ; no — I think I 
should say with approval, for he who worships 
a Goddess in spirit and in truth is not likely 
to slide too often from his chair beneath the table, 
at a smoking concert, and, though no puritan, 
I have observed that a Spartan menu is conducive 
to a healthy body, and a healthy body is the 
fit home for a healthy mind. 

A celebrated Scot has said that the Scotsman 
without religion is apt to drop into the public- 
house ; an irreligious young man, I would add, 
with no blasphemy, but a knowledge of mankind 
and romantic views, can make out of a West End 
young lady with bowed lips and russet locks, 
a Divinity as effectual as a stone Virgin between 
wax candles. Still, your Divinity must have 
her whims, and not all her whims can shatter 


20 HANDS UP ! 

her in the eyes of her worshipper. I really don’t 
think that the secrecy was good, but that is a 
detail. As luck would have it (I remember how, 
in the agony of the time, I thought some hideous 
Fate stepped in upon our family ever) as luck 
would have it, out of my romance came tragedy. 

Thrice 1 had conveyed My Lady to her door 
and, by her request, parted from her behind 
some trees that overlooked her father’s house. 
I suspect there was nothing more in it than the 
chaffing of her brothers ; certainly they used 
to cock an eye in a roguish way upon me at 
times, and I fancy indeed that we were looked 
upon as something of a joke. My Lady would 
have it, at any rate, that I remain in the shadow 
of the rhododendrons until she had rung and 
till the flood of light upon the gravel had 
announced the opening of the door, its extin- 
guishment the closing. I was to count ten — or 
something of that kind — and then depart. 

This kind of parody of Romeo I can quite 
understand is titillating to a young lady who owns 
a ticket of the Circulating Library, but there 
are many types of minds in the world and while 
some deck the sinister with the romantic, others 
see in the romantic the sinister. One such had 
spied upon me ; and on the third, or perhaps 
fourth occasion of this secretive departure, just 
as I was turning away, he laid hold of me — a 
perfect type of dirty-scarved, greasy-capped 
lurcher. 

“ Half a minute young man,” said he. “ I’ve 
been watching you.” 


WHY I WENT WEST 21 

“ Well ? ” said I. 

“ What’s it worth ? ” said he. 

“ What do you mean ? ” said I. 

“Why,” said he, “your little game. I’ll 
keep my mouth shut for a quid.” 

My dander was by no means up ; there was a 
trifle of almost amusement in my mind. 

“ If you don’t give me a quid,” he said, “ I’ll 
step right over and tell the gentleman that you’ve 
been trying to get round about his daughter.” 

Of course, as the saying is, I saw red at that 
and hit out ; and there we fell to, he, with his 
hooligan methods to aid in the victory, I with 
the intense madness at the sullying of my idol. 
I write with a certain air of levity of these 
incidents. I do so because there is no other way. 
When I think of the sequel of it all it seems a 
very silly play. 

At last I landed him a blow that not omy 
laid him flat upon the ground, but kept him 
there. 

I was blown, my heart going like a piston, 
the sweat was cold on me suddenly in the autumn 
night. I looked at my antagonist again. The 
horrible, pallid light of an arc lamp at the corner 
sifted through the hanging boughs of a lime-tree 
and glistened on his teeth. My heart, that had 
been going like a piston, seemed to clutch, and 
clutch, and clutch ; an immense panic fell on 
me. I bent down and felt his heart and could 
find no beating. 

I remember the torture of the moment, how 
I was maddened with annoyance at myself 


22 HANDS UP ! 

because all I could feel was the throb, throbbing 
of the blood in my own hand. I almost w^ept. I 
put my ear to his breast and what I heard was like 
the echo of my own heart-throbs in my ear. I 
could hear nothing outside of my terror. 

I stood up and said to myself over and over 
again, “ Be calm ! Be calm — ^be calm ! ” I 
pressed my lips together ; 1 went over the 

alphabet, all in a mad endeavour to collect 
myself. So I gained some measure of calm, at 
least enough to hold his wrist again, not with 
my thumb — ^remembering that there is a pulse in 
the thumb ; but there w^as no pulse of life in 
his wrist. 

You can conceive my panic. No time now 
for histrionics. As quick as a knife-thrust I 
saw the gallows, my mother’s agony — her death 
with a broken heart — already nigh enough 
broken by the tragedy of my father’s madness. 
I walked home. I wanted to run home but I 
controlled myself. I walked home. 

My mother had gone to bed. I sat all night 
in my room. It is a wonder I did not go grey 
as I have heard men may in a night. Time after 
time I was possessed of a desire to go out and 
run, run, run. Where ? I would ask myself. 
And there I sat all night reasoning myself into a 
course of wdse action. Wise action ! It was the 
biggest blunder I ever made in my life. 

I appeared at breakfast . My mother remarked 
upon my haggard looks. I made some excuse — 
I know not what — of neuralgia, of neuralgic 
pain, of a chill. I have had some moments of 


WHY I WENT WEST 23 

suspense in my life. I have had some times of 
anguish. But they concern myself only, or 
those who are not my blood kin. I wanted to 
tell her all ; and anon I dared not. I wanted 
to bid her farewell — and could not. I made my 
morning’s farewell over-cold instead of over- 
tender — I left the house, I made haste to my 
bank and drew my little all, and thence to a 
shipping office. 

I saw a clerk who cannot, I suspect, have been 
a youth of much penetration ; for, though I 
schooled myself, I can hardly think that my face 
was free of signs of anxiety. I told him some airy 
tale of wishing to get the first possible boat for 
America. There was one in a fortnight. When 
I said, in as nonchalant a voice as I could 
muster ; “ Oh — that is some time, and my 

business demands haste,” with a “ Just a 
moment ” he withdrew to the side of an elderly 
man at a rearward desk, an elderly man who 
had that air as of being ready to jump into the 
breach at a moment’s notice, which I, observing, 
took for a sign that his suspicion was aroused. 

Nothing of the sort of course ; he was only 
eager to book a passage. He came over to me at 
once and echoing the “ Just a moment ” of the 
younger assistant, departed into a partitioned 
off room at the end of the office. Through the 
dulled glass I saw him take a receiver from the 
rests of a telephone. I made a turn on my heel 
to run from the door, sure that he was ringing 
up Duke Street, and then I gripped myself. I 
was going to see it through. 


24 


HANDS UP ! 


He returned (after about a hundred years) to 
tell me that that evening I could sail from 
Liverpool ; there was just one berth, second 
class, if that would suit. 

There is no pummelling worse than that of 
a guilty conscience. I leave it to the reader to 
imagine, upon these lines, the pummelling of 
the ensuing days and these last, and horrific, 
pummellings on the coming alongside of the 
Doctor’s launch, on the coming alongside of the 
pilot boat, on the coming aboard of the Customs 
men ; on the descent of the gangway. 

That, then, is how 1 left home. 


CHAPTER II 


AT BLACK KETTLE 

I FIND that others have felt, as I first felt on 
going West, “ there is nothing here but the 
railway.” The feeling is, of course, absurd. 
But it is very comprehensible. For mile after 
mile there is nothing to be seen but the wilderness. 
The sage-brush lands, after the East is past, 
roll everlastingly North and South. 

I sat looking out at them, and instead of feeling 
more lonely and miserable, felt more at peace. 
For these spaces asked me as it were to live 
up to them, to put something in myself that 
they possessed. So, instead of the sage-brush 
lands depressing me, they made me adopt this 
outlook. I did not wish to weep for tangles and 
misunderstandings in the little isle back there 
arcoss the Atlantic. The accepting mood was 
stronger. Very good ; if that be Fate, let me 
bear it. It was only the mountains that de- 
pressed me. 

As the train entered these canons of the West 
where there seems hardly room for aught but 
the rivers that foam through them, though 
engineers have found a way, I felt again the 
fatuity of much of life. Restrictions and con- 
strictions seemed a great part of life ; also 
misunderstandings . 

The train screamed on through the mountains ; 
hummed, on a hollow note, across trestles ; 

roared through canons ; and I was glad when 
25 


26 


HANDS UP ! 

we emerged at last, mounting upward, at Black 
Kettle which I had selected, looking on the great 
map in the railway booking-hall back- East, 
because its name appealed to me, in the centre 
of a string of appealing names, thus ; Placer, 
Antelope Spring, Adobe, Black Kettle, Lone 
Tree, i:jrt Lincoln, Montezuma. But by the 
time that we reached Black Kettle 1 had quite 
decided that there was nothing for me to do 
in that country but to help to keep the railway 
in repair ! 

Take Black Kettle for example. It consisted of 
seven houses ; one hotel, one store, one boarding- 
house, four residential houses with their vege- 
table patches. The inhabitants were ; the hotel 
proprietor, the store-keeper, the store-keeper’s 
wife, the barman, the Chinese cook, four section 
men (including the section boss), a telegraph 
operator (who was also station agent). 

Everybody was very decent to me when I went 
in. The hotel proprietor offered me a free drink 
before I had booked a room ; the telegraph 
operator (a thin, wiry little Scotsman with a thin, 
wiry moustache, stained with tobacco juice) in- 
troduced himself to me when, after a wash, I 
came out again and walked on the deserted 
balcony, introduced himself and begged me to 
come and drink with him all in one breath. 
The store-keeper, when I stepped over past his 
door and caught his eye, gave me a nod and said 
“ How-do ” abruptly, but friendly enough ; he 
looked an abrupt man, a philosophic dry old 
stick, very like pictures of Uncle Sam. The 


AT BLACK KETTLE 27 

section men, when they came over to the hotel 
in the evening, stood near me as if to give me a 
chanee to talk, if I wished to ; and, when I did 
not speak, as I had read that in the West 
attempts at making acquaintance quickly are 
sometimes resented, their boss said : “ Perhaps 
the gentleman setting there would care for a 
game ? ” 

I turned my head. 

“ Good evening, sir,” he said. “ Kind of lone- 
some for a stranger in this town. Would you 
care for a game of chequers ? ” 

And so I played a game of draughts with the 
boss on the first evening in Black Kettle. 
He was a Michigan man, all bones and joints 
and elasticity, with a great foot for a double 
shuffle, a nose like a door-knocker, chunks of 
cheek-bones, a thin, determined bony chin, and 
glittering eyes. 

I have spoken of getting used to the strange 
surroundings. The surroundings were — across 
the railway track — ^green and silver benehes 
(because of their grass and sand) going up, up, 
up, in rolls, as if they were for giants to sit on 
and watch some play going on in Black Kettle. 
These benches fascinated me. The immense 
sweep of them, and the way white clouds would 
look up away beyond the last one, and not as if 
just behind the last, as if, rather, there was 
immensity between them and that last roll of 
hill, charmed me. To lie on the verandah of 
the Palace Hotel of Black Kettle and wateh the 
clouds go up behind the benches, all to the sound 


28 


HANDS UP ! 

of grasshoppers chirping, seemed all that one 
could do in Black Kettle. If one had not to 
work to live, I think it all that one would desire 
to do also. I am no hobo, but I love to lie on 
the Palace verandah and listen to the silence. 

So do all men who visit Black Kettle. And to 
see a cowpuncher with his back to the wall and 
his legs stretched half across the verandah there, 
while his horse waits for him with drooping head, 
almost too lazy-looking to flick the flies, is to 
see a picture not easily forgotten. 

But, as luck would have it, no cowpuncher was 
there to suggest, when I arrived, by his presence, 
that there were homes and work back from the 
track. Black Kettle was all alone with its 
handful of people for three weeks. The sitting- 
room of the Palace, inhabited by a dull suite of 
furniture, the bar-room inhabited by stolid 
casks, a few small tables and chairs empty 
beside them, and a white-faced nickel-in-the-slot 
hurdy-gurdy, and a large spittoon, plunged me 
in terror. The barman sometimes woke in that 
desolation. The proprietor sometimes coughed 
in the kitchen. Ah Sing sometimes sang, among 
his pots, in a high, thin, plaintive voice. I made 
up my mind that there was no room for another 
barman, even had I cared for the job or been 
considered capable. I also made up my mind 
that there was no scope for another hotel, 
even if I had the money to start one. 

So, as the third week drew near an end, sick 
of doing nothing but worrying on the verandah, 
I approached the section gang boss and asked 


AT BLACK KETTLE 29 

him if he knew of any work to be had in the 
vicinity. 

He looked at me sidewise. 

“ What kind of job ? ” he asked. “ Anything 
to do for the time being ? ” 

“ Anything at all,” 1 said. 

“ Well, there’s an extra gang coming to work 
up there — seven miles up the line. 1 reckon I 
could say a word for you to the boss. He’ll be 
coming up with some men on the passenger 
train to-night.” 

The train was not due for an hour ; but the 
inhabitants were already arranging themselves 
in picturesque, open-shirted attitudes, on the 
platform. By “ inhabitants ” I mean the three 
section men, hands in pockets : one standing, 
leaning against the wall of the little station house, 
one sitting, leaning against it and nursing one 
knee, the other leg thrust out ; one sitting on a 
truck ; the telegraph operator inside his room 
with his shoulder against the jamb, his hands in 
pockets, his neck stretching out ever and again 
as he spat across the platform on to the track. 

When we appeared he spat and said : “ How 
goes it ? ” and the section boss replied : “ Well, 
how are you making out ? ” 

The three section men looked stolid ; silence 
fell. Then the operator spat again and said : 
“ I was just telling the boys of when I was 
running one of the stations in Columbia for a 
gold-mining company there ; ” and he plunged 
into a story about yellow fever and how he kept 
the men all working and how they dropped ‘like 


80 HANDS UP ! 

flies, gents ; yes, sir, like flies,” and all the while 
his instrument behind him was giving little 
jerky “ tick-tacks ” as if some drowsy old woman 
napped over her knitting within. 

Then the booming whistle of the approaching 
train sounded, the track began to sing. The 
engine shrieked, rounded the curve, and the 
“ passenger ” ran into the depot with a whirl of 
dust and an odour of oil and hot iron. The 
conductor and one man alighted. A tin box 
shot out of one of the cars ; the conductor called 
“ All aboard ! ” and then, as the train moved 
on again, he stood, holding out a hand to catch 
a rail, foot slightly raised ready to step on when 
the end of a car would come level, and — “ How-do 
gents ! ” he hailed. “ How’s things up here ? 
On the boom ? ” laughed, stepped aboard, waved 
his hand ; and the train slid out and we sat look- 
ing at the tail-light dwindling — ^then looked at 
the man who stood on the platform in the dusk. 

I saw him loom big and heavy and withal 
easy despite his avoirdupois. The section boss 
advanced on him, he on the section boss, and 
they pump-handled each other cordially and 
stood chatting. 

The operator said : “ Oh, well ! ” and slipped 
in to his room and presently a slab of light 
fell from his door across the platform, and the 
sound of his instrument broke out. A little 
chill fell and the scent of sage-brush blessed 
the night. 

“ Cold,” said one of the section men, rose, and 
drifted away with slow, heavy steps. 


AT BLACK KETTLE 31 

“ Aye, aye ! ” said section man number two, 
and rose. 

“ Um ! ” said section man number three, and 
came erect from leaning against the wall. They 
followed their mate. 

“ Come here, sir ! I want to introduce you. 
I’ve been telling the boss — this is Alf Douglas, 
boss of the extra gang coming up here ; I 
don’t know your name, sir ? 

“Eh — er — Williams,” I said. Why 
“ Williams ” don’t ask me. It was the first 
that came to my mind, and so Williams I would 
be for the future, at least till I had an English 
paper and had my mind relieved. “ John 
Williams,” I said next. Why “ John ” don’t 
ask me either. 

“ How do, sir ? ” said the boss. “ English- 
man ? ” 

“ How do you do ? ” I said. “ No, I’m ” 

“ Oh — a Scotsman,” he broke in. “ That’s 
better. Well, Mr. Dunnage, he told me you 
want a job. You want it badly ? ” 

“ Yes,” I said. 

“ Um ! ” he said, and shook his head. “ The 
trouble is that I’ve got only a gang of Dagoes 
to work for me and I never heard of a white 
man working with Dagoes before. The money’s 
all right, two and a half, just as if they were 
white, but maybe you wouldn’t care to tackle 
that — even temporar’y till the white gang comes 
up ?” 

“ There is a white gang ? ” I asked. 

We were standing near the operator’s door and 


32 


HANDS UP ! 

the light showed Douglas’s face. I thought he 
gave a quick, keener look at me, as if thinking 
I was none so eager for work after all ; and we 
in the Old Country are told to look eager in the 
States ! 

“ In about a month,” he said. 

“ Good,” I said. “ I can work in the Dago 
gang till then.” 

I saw that they both felt a little bad about 
it, then, as if they liked me for taking the job 
on, but felt some remorse for having nothing 
better to offer me. Still — I had to work and, 
as I have explained, being green to the country, 
there seemed to me to be no other work in the 
country but railroad work. The place looked, 
to my new eyes, wholly a void — with the railroad 
running through it. 

But things were not so bad as I had prepared 
to find them at the Gravel Pit. Black Kettle 
lay seven miles away and to my imagination the 
place was quite cut off from the world ! 

The passage of occasional freight -trains served 
but to emphasise the loneliness of the country ; 
for, after they had gone screaming past, even 
before the dust swirls by the track side had 
settled, the silence came again. Facing a great 
hill, a little west of the pit, a steam shovel had 
been set. That steam shovel, in its own little 
siding, that steam shovel, all covered with 
tarpaulins, seemed a melancholy sight. I could 
hardly believe that white men would be coming 
anon to get steam up in it and set it nosing and 
scooping into the hill. It wore the air of having 


AT BLACK KETTLE S3 

been left there for the Spirit of the Dry Belt to 
cover over with sand, and blot out, and forget. 

The camp consisted of two old freight-cars, one 
used for a store-house and dining-room and 
kitchen and sleeping-room for a Chinaman ; the 
other used for a “ bunk-house ” for the men, with 
bunks fitted up inside it and just the end 
partitioned off as a boss’s room. In the boss’s 
room were two bunks, and one of them he told 
me I could occupy. 

“ I can’t see a white man sleeping with these 
Dagoes,” he said. 

It was very good of him and I appreciated 
it very deeply. That was the only difference 
made between me and the gang. I slept in the 
cut-off apartment with the boss, but, at work, 
I was treated just as a unit of the gang. When 
Douglas chose to be abusive he was abusive to 
us all ; his curses rang in my ears as sharply as 
in the ears of his “ Eye-talians.” 

Our work was to undermine the hill along 
the railway track, with pick, shovel and dyna- 
mite, preparing a path for the steam shovel. 
Here was new work indeed for me ; but what 
made it trying was the attitude of the “Eye- 
talians.” They resented my presence ; and I 
went upon the principle of ignoring their resent- 
ment. If a man working above me let a boulder 
plunge down on me without any shout of warning, 
1 slipped aside, as if it was all in the day’s work, 
never so much as looked up — ^and went on 
working. I acted also upon the principle of 
showing, as well as no resentment, a good 


84 


HANDS UP ! 

example. If I was working above an Italian 
and loosened a boulder I would shout : “ Look 
out ! (or “ Look up ! ” when I found that 
“ Look up 1 ” takes the place of “ Look out 1 ” 
in the West). In a way it was a mistake. 
These Italians seemed mostly of the order of 
humanity that requests and begs to be brow- 
beaten. Douglas’s wild language, and the way 
he had of raising a clenched fist after a command, 
accelerating the gang’s movements, he had 
learnt, doubtless, just as I was learning. I 
sometimes saw his eye on me after such episodes 
as I tell of — when a boulder rolled towards me 
without warning and I merely dodged — saw his 
eye on me, and at first wondered if he thought 
I was not agile enough ! Saw his eye on me 
when I shouted : “ Look up ! ” — ^thoughtful, 

watchful, considering. He seemed to say : 
“ He’ll learn ! ” That was what, eventually, 
his glance seemed always to imply when he 
looked on such scenes. 

I did learn too. 

At the end of the first week the boss called 
to me and one of the Italians and told us to lift 
a log that lay by the railway track and throw it 
down the further side of the embankment. 

I stooped to lift one end ; the Italian stooped 
to the other. I lifted the log to my right 
shoulder ; but the Italian, who was a left- 
handed man, lifted by the left and eased his 
end on to his left shoulder. Thus we were back 
to back ; and when I started off in a slow step, 
never thinking of left-handed men, I headed 


35 


AT BLACK KETTLE 

one way and he the other way. Thus he fell 
backwards, I felt the jar, and looking round 
smartly, saw him also looking round, off his 
balance. Instead of trying to hold the log — 
though, just at that, he regained his balance, 
with legs spraddled like a slack pair of com- 
passes — he flung it from him. My shoulder 
and collar-bone received a pretty jar, for I — 
still unlike the “ Dago Push,” as they were called 
by the Black Kettle section gang — ^was bent 
upon, as I would say, being “ decent,” and was 
clutching the log to save the Italian. Down 
went his end thud, and he called me what no 
man may call another in earnest. 

My blood boiled. I wanted, in one stammering 
speech, to explain to this Dago what I thought 
of him — and his gang. I wanted to tell him 
that I had tried to help him when I saw what 
he had done, to tell him that he and his fellows 
deliberately rolled boulders upon me without 
warning, that I always warned, that — every 
single item of the strained week. Instead, at 
that oath, and seeing the Dago come for me, I 
simply saw nothing but his ugly face and deter- 
mined to pound it. I made three swift steps to 
meet him. I had no intention to stand him off. 
If he thought he could advance on me and I do 
the standing off he was all out of his reckoning. 
I went to meet him mightily rejoicing. 

He paused then and made a grab for a pinch- 
bar, snatched it up and rushed afresh on me. 
There flashed into my head a yarn told by the 
operator at Black Kettle that ended : “ Fists 


36 


HANDS UP ! 

are all very good, but in a brown gang of any 
kind a white man is going to have no show with 
his fists. If he ain’t got a gun let him take 
the edge of a shovel.” So, when the whole gang 
dropped their tools and came plunging on me 
I grabbed a shovel and rushed at them. I was 
glad they all came on me. That one was not 
nearly enough. I could have knocked Italy 
ofi the map of Europe at the moment I 

They simply parted feebly at that, made 
abortive swipes at me and circled wide. My 
man even dropped his pinch-bar, so I dropped the 
shovel and smashed him with my fist. There 
was a thud of feet in the sand, a bellow of oaths, 
and I was caught by the shoulders and sent 
flying. 

“ Come on ! The lot of ye ! Get a move 
on ! ” And Douglas, having flung me from 
my enemy, shot past us to the gang, routing 
them back to work. I stood up and looked on 
the scene. The “ Eyetalian ” rose with bleeding 
nose and held out his hand. 

“ All right,” he said. “ We shake hand. 
Everyt’ing all right.” 

And he meant it — ^as you shall hear. I took 
his hand and we shook. 

“ Come on ! Come on ! Get a move on ! ” 
came Douglas’s voice. 

We went back to our log. The “ Eyetalian ” 
lifted by the right this time and was very 
careful, when we had carried the log across the 
track, to lower from the shoulder to the carry 
in unison with me, even said “ Ready ? ” waited 


AT BLACK KETTLE 37 

for my “ Right ! ” and then we flung the great 
log over. 

He was then my very good friend and kept 
repeating, as we clambered up to the gang : 
“ All right. Everyt’ing all right. Ver’ good.” 

But there was a man, Pietro, in the gang, for 
whom I had, as the West says, “ no use.” And, 
as luck would have it, I was sent ofl in his 
company to bring up a push-car load of cord- 
wood that had been thrown from a train for the 
camp, but thrown ofl beside the steam-shovel, 
a quarter of a mile away. 

“ Here Scotty — and you Pietro — ^you go down 
and get the push-car on the track and fetch up a 
load of cord-wood from down at the steam- 
shovel.” 

Pietro gave me a malevolent look and Douglas, 
I noticed, smiled. We placed the wheels on 
the rails and the push-car atop and trotted ofl 
behind the car along the track. Just round the 
bend a grade begins and the car required no 
pushing but, instead, had to be kept hold of by 
the handles. A little further on was the trestle 
bridge, built, as you know these bridges are, 
quite open, so that any one going over has to 
step from tie to tie and can look clear down to 
the bottom of the gorge below. 

Suddenly, as we came near the bridge and 
were hidden from the gang by the bend, Pietro 
said : “ Why you not run ? ” and began to 
speed the car toward the bridge. “ Run ! Can 
you no’ run ? ” 

“ Take care at the bridge,” I said. 


38 


HANDS UP ! 


“You scared ! ” he cried, and leant on the 
car and sent it fiercely before him. I gave but 
one glance and then saw his game. He was 
getting ready to leap to a sitting position on 
the car when we should gain the bridge. 1 
noticed his left shoulder (he running on my right) 
edging toward me. 

What I expected happened. 

Suddenly he leapt, intending to spin round 
and sit on the car, at the same time intending to 
jolt me with his left shoulder. Just as he leapt 
I dodged — with the result that he did not cannon 
ofi me on to the car, but fell between me and it, 
I hung on to the car and yanked it to a stand- 
still and waited for him to rise. He scrambled 
to his feet, muttering, with his eyes glinting 
on me. 

“ You missed it,” I said. 

“ Yes, I miss,” he said, and took hold again 
and we trotted on afresh. Now came my turn. 

“ Run,” said I and, full tilt, I started for the 
bridge which was just about a score of ties 
distant. 

I like nothing better than taking his own 
weapons to a man who is determined to prove 
himself a menial person. He gripped tight to 
his handle and fell into step. I put on every 
ounce of pressure 1 had in my body. I stretched 
my body too, and my arms, so that I could see 
the ties before coming to them, and thus not lose a 
step ; for I knew that we were almost on the 
bridge. Then we were on it ! And I was glad 
that I had stretched out so — for our speed was 


AT BLACK KETTLE 39 

now so great that I could hardly keep up with 
the push-car ; and the ties, and the depth of the 
gulch between them, made, together, just a 
blur below me. 

“ Run ! ” I cried. 

He simply caught tight hold of the car and 
hung on. Suddenly he slipped. But I was ready 
for that, to grasp him if he showed signs of falling 
between the ties. No I He was too fond of 
life. He clung to the car, and to life, so ten- 
aciously that he made a drag on the car as, with 
his body stretched out, his toes caught, caught, 
caught on the edges of the ties. He had almost 
stopped the car by the time we gained the 
opposite bank. There he scrambled to his feet. 
And now I had my eye on him. 

“ What you do ? ” he said. 

“ What you tried to do to me,” I said, “ and 
don’t try again.” 

We trudged on thoughtfully to the cord-wood 
pile. He was silent ; but, as you can surmise, 
the air was full of trouble. It broke at the cord- 
wood pile. 

“ You block that wheel to keep car from 
running down,” he ordered. 

At first I resented the order — you see by now 
what kind of kid I was and will understand me 
doing so. I thought to tell him to do the blocking 
himself, but quickly argued : “ What’s the 

sense ? I don’t want to dominate him. I only 
want fair play ; ” so I blocked the wheel, with 
a billet of wood from the side of the track, and^ 
as I rose from doing so, 1 saw a shadow leapi n 


40 HANDS UP ! 

along the ground — ^gave a jump sidewise to keep 
whatever caused it from falling on me, and 
smack came a billet down on the car-end just 
where I had stood. 

I had been far too patient with him. I should 
(as I expect you have already thought) have 
made him block that wheel. However, he had 
got so much rope that he was eager to hang 
himself. 

“ Oh ! ” he said. “ 1 not see you — I begin 
to load car.” 

“ If you are going to load the car like that,” 
I said, “ you’ll have to do it yourself,” and I 
stood back. 

“ I not notice where you stand,” said he. 

I was pondering exactly what to do. Again 
1 made a mistake. I did what is called “ leaving 
it at that ” ; I walked over to the cord- wood 
pile and began loading the car. When I was at 
the car he would be at the pile — when I was at 
the pile he was at the car. So we came and 
went. 

Then, just as I was putting on what looked 
as if it would have to be the last billet, he yelled : 
“ Look up ! ” and flung a billet, from where 
he stood, right to the top of the load, with the 
result that it all came rattling down to both 
ends of the car. More intent on saving the 
work of reloading than in attending to Pietro, I 
leapt to an end and thrust up the pile there, 
balancing it. Pietro stood watching me, grin- 
ning. Then he pointed to some billets that had 
rolled ofl at the other end. 


AT BLACK KETTLE 41 

“ Lift these — too many 1 ’’ he said. 

That was enough. He had coaxed the fight 
out of me in earnest and I lifted a billet 
as he ordered — ^but sent it bang at his head and 
followed it up with myself. I had never learnt to 
box ; but that which followed was hardly a 
boxing contest. I assure you that before we 
were through I was battered black and blue, and 
yet I felt not one single blow, knew no pain 
until afterwards. All that I knew was that every 
now and then 1 got a smash in at Pietro, keeping 
my eyes on his all the time. 

The most terrible thing to remember is when 
I found myself on the top of him, after he had 
fallen, and with my hands on his windpipe. It 
was his eyes, protruding, that brought me to 
myself, horrified. 

I cannot tell you the relief 1 felt when he lurched 
to his legs and staggered to the car, kicked aside 
the billets that blocked the wheels and began 
to strain against the car to set it in motion. 

I walked over and leant to the task with him 
and so, both bleeding and bruised, we urged 
the car back to camp. When we gained the 
other bank, beyond the trestle, I stopped and 
held out my hand. 

“ All right ? I asked. 

He looked at my hand. He half extended his. 
Then : “ No 1 ” he said and swore in Italian. 

“ Oh, all right,” I said, and we pushed on, 
rounded the bend, and came back to where the 
gang worked on the gravel slope. 

Douglas stood by the track-side ; the gang 


42 HANDS UP ! 

toiled up on the hill-face. As we passed 
Douglas I squinted up at him, where I bent 
pushing the load, and he looked round hastily, 
was just going to look away again — and then he 
saw our faces, wheeled about, looked at Pietro — 
at me — ^back again — ^then chuckled to himself. 
That was all. But the incident was not closed. 

When we had unloaded beside the cook’s car 
and lifted the push car off the wheels, and the 
wheels off the track, we returned to the gang 
and clambered to our places on the hill. Im- 
mediately Pietro began to talk wildly in Italian 
while using his pick. But he became so excited 
anon that he ceased to wield the pick. 

“ Pietro, you so-and-so,” came Douglas’s 
voice. “ I’ve got my eye on you.” 

Pietro cursed under his breath, but either 
wonderful is the carrying capacity of atmosphere 
in the Dry Belt or else wonderfully accurate 
was Douglas’s knowledge of his man. 

“ Don’t curse at me ! ” came Douglas’s voice. 

Pietro picked on, and quietly his mates dis- 
charged questions at him. As I picked into the 
hill around a boulder I saw their eyes glinting 
towards me. 

Pietro began again ; and one or two of the 
gang now grew so excited that they ceased to 
work too. Douglas’s voice bellowed, and they 
fell to work again. 

We were now confronted with rock. 

“ Is that rock ? ” hailed Douglas. 

“ Yes ! ” we shouted down. 

“ All right ; ” and he clambered up to us and 


AT BLACK KETTLE 43 

the two men who did the blasting as a rule 
fell to work making the holes for the charge. 

I don’t know how it befell — for Douglas 
generally erred on the safe side and drew us off 
far further than seemed necessary when a blast 
was made ; indeed 1 have heard the men laugh at 
his care over them, and they have looked at him 
so insolently when he ordered them to go well 
back, that he has had (as the phrase is) to put 
the screw on extra tight afterwards — I don’t 
know how it befell, but this time he neither 
ordered us off nor went off himself. 

Always, 1 must say, he stood far nearer 
than he allowed any man to stand when a charge 
was made. I grew to admire Douglas immensely, 
and I want to note that fact about him. How- 
ever, this time he seemed hardly thinking about 
the detonation ; stood just at the foot of the 
hill, and we twenty yards along the grade. 

“ Boom ! ” and up went a cascade of dirt and 
rocks. 

It was so vigorous that we raised our shovels 
and held them over our heads to shield us from 
the falling shower of dirt and stones. Suddenly 
we saw that Douglas had been hit. A chunk 
of rock had smashed his head. I ran to him at 
once and bent over him. The gang followed. 

“ He hurt bad ? ” asked one. 

“ My God I ” I cried. “ Look ! ” 

His head was gashed frightfully. 

“ He dead ! ” cried Pietro. “ He dead ! ” 

And then he gave a screech — ^there is no other 
word for it — and leapt on me. 


44 


HANDS UP ! 

I slipped aside, but they seemed all to be upon 
me, these Dagoes ; and wildly I clutched a 
shovel and whirled round with my back to the 
hilh And then that left-handed man, with whom 
I had had the altercation, showed his genuine- 
ness. He gave a kind of scream. 

“ Ver’ good. Everything all right. I stick 
to you ! ” and he snatched a shovel and stood 
beside me and poured forth a cascade of voluble 
Italian on the gang. 

A showman in a cage of wild cats must feel 
somewhat as we felt then. They rushed on me 
and I brought down the shovel on a pate, felt 
my legs wobbly with fear and my heart big 
with determination all at one time ; swung the 
shovel round and smashed again, standing 
away from my one friend so as not to hit him. 

And then there came a whoop and a slither 
of stones, and the gang fell back, and I too 
stepped back and gave a quick look up hill in 
the direction of their gaze. And coming down 
the incline, with forefeet taut in the sliding 
soil, hind legs bent, sliding down in the wonderful 
way that they have the knack of, came a white 
Western pony, with a big, broad-chested 
man upon its back, he balanced exquisitely like 
the God Apollo to my eye. 

But there was nothing of ancient Greece in 
his weapon. His left hand lightly held the reins, 
his right was raised in air, holding a long-nosed 
Colt, raised with the elbow toward us and the 
wrist backward, ready to slam down forward, 
and aim, and fire, all in one quick gesture. 


CHAPTER III 


THE COWBOY PHILOSOPHER 

Within one minute the “ Dago Push ” was in 
full flight round the bend, campwards. Within 
the hour, with Douglas unconscious across the 
saddle, my splendid ally and I came into Black 
Kettle. The friendly Dago, we suggested, 
should accompany us. But no — he said he 
would be all right with the gang and so, as he 
spoke as one who knew, we did not urge him to 
come with us. We came to Black Kettle, 
which clustered there, oblivious of all things 
at the foot of the benches, in the sunlight and 
sand. Looking round for sign of any in- 
habitants I saw, on this occasion, what I had 
never noticed before : corrals to South of the 
track, in a fold of the benches ; and, standing 
in the centre of the little cluster of houses, 
upright in the sand, a couple of hitching posts 
with rings in their tops. Strange that 1 had 
not noticed them before. I suppose I had been 
so possessed of my half panicky idea that there 
was nothing in the country but the railroad 
that those two signs simply whispered to me 
in vain — of ranches backward in the hills, and 
horsemen, sometimes at least, riding into town 
from somewhere. 

A hail brought Scotty, the lean, tobacco- 
juice-attenuated operator on to the platform, 
rubbing his eyes from sleep and with dishevelled 
hair, the ends of his sparse moustache, which 

43 


46 HANDS UP! 

he had a habit of chewing, draggling in his 
mouth. He simply called out an oath (in a 
way common to the place) at sight of our burden, 
and hastened, flurried and jerkily, to our aid, 
helped us to carry Douglas into the depot 
office and lay him on the floor there, and then 
he rushed to his instrument to call up a doctor 
from Lone Tree. His tap-tapping over he 
turned to consider Douglas, who now broke 
into pitiable moans. 

“ By , Apache,” said he. “ It gives him a 

twist. I think I’d rather be a stift' than like that.” 

“ Oh, I don’t know,” said he who was called 
Apache, and raised and nodded his head in a 
determined fashion. I noticed then, for the 
first time, that he wore very little gold ear-rings. 
The light caught them as he moved his head 
so. “I’m not so sure about that. Life is not 
worth living for the man who can’t get a move 
on things, for the man who is, as you might say, 
waiting — ^for a man with a mine two hundred 
miles beyond rail-head and he maj^be sixty 
years old and the railway not liable to extend 
for twenty years. He does not want a pompous 
funeral, and he is not going to eat and drink 
his gravestone. Waiting is bad when there 
is no show. If you are five hundred dollars in 
debt to the hotel-keeper and your wages are 
only forty-five, it’s bad waiting for that forty- 
five, especially if you want to buy a new under- 
shirt and a pair of pants. It must be bad 
waiting in a cell for a hanging. But Life’s 
worth living when things are moving — Life’s 


THE COWBOY PHILOSOPHER 47 

worth living for the prospector when the 
track-layers are moving a mile a day nearer 
his prospective mine and he’s only setat fifty. 
If he was only twenty-one it would be futile, 
for he’d be broke again long before he was 
forty. Life’s worth living if you owe your 
hotel-proprietor last month’s grub and bed — 
thirty dollars — and have a hundred dollars 
coming to you at end of the month. You’ll be 
liable to celebrate paying him off,” he added, 
“ and go broke again. It’s all right waiting 
even for the hangman in the condemned cell 
if you’ve got a file Yip your sleeve. Yes, sir — 
and Alf Douglas is not so bad just now as 
you might think. He’s putting up a fight and 
you’ve wired for the doc. Life is not a bed of 
roses — and only a man who thinks it is, is going 
to go and say anything so damn futile. There’s 
something to be said for pain, too, my friend. 
Pain will teach you how to grip your jaws 
together and 1 never heard that a cod-fished- 
mouthed man was much use. Got any cigar- 
ettes ? ” 

“ — don’t smoke them,” said Scotty. “ I 

got a plug of chewing tobacco.” 

Apache shook his head. I took more stock 
of him now — ^this man who had come so appro- 
priately to my aid and to the aid of the boss. 
He was a lithe, sunburnt fellow, wearing open 
a loose jacket, beneath which was a black shirt 
with pearl buttons. Round his neck was a 
great cream-coloured neckerchief that hung 
half down his back in a V shape. He wore 


48 


HANDS UP ! 

heavy leathern “ chaps ” (chaparreras). On 
his head was a round, soft hat, broad of brim. 
He was a picturesque figure, one to look at 
with interest, though he bore himself without 
swagger and apparently made no attempt 
to attract attention. 

He shook his head again. 

“ No use for an invalid,” he said ; “ but 

Douglas is liable to want a smoke after the doc’s 
been along.” He produced a bag of tobacco and 
cigarette papers and squatted down cross-legged 
on the floor and began to roll. “ I can’t stay on 
too long,” said he. “ I have an appointment.” 

Scotty looked out on the sunny square (I 
learnt afterwards that the patch of sand was 
called a square) and said absently : “Far away ? ” 

“ Not very far away,” said Apache. “ See — 
I’ve rolled half a dozen and pinched them firm. 
He’s only got to lick them if he wants them. 
No, not very far.” 

There was a long pause. 

“ You working with Johnson up at his new 
ranch, ain’t you ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Kind of a gardening job for a man like you, 
ain’t it ? ” This said a little tentatively. 

“ Well, there are sure some implements to 
handle.” 

“ They tell me he ain’t got no stock at all on 
the place — ^that he’s one of these yere new gents 
that grows a rose tree in a dump of cinders.” 

“That’s what they say,” said Apache. 

■“ Maketh the desert to blossom with the rose.” 


THE COWBOY PHILOSOPHER 49 

“ That’s what they say ! ” grunted Scotty, 
still staring out, his back turned. “ Don’t 
you know yourself when you’re aidin’ him in his 
pursuits ? If it wasn’t a man like you I’d say 
you were both locoed to try and grow fruit up 
there.” 

“It’s been done all right,” said Apache. 
“ I’ve seen these gardeners come in where 
you’d think the only profession, bar cow'- 
punching, would be making lava ornaments 
— in a drier country than this — just a day’s 
ride more to hell, as they say — and — ” he 
paused — “ before three years were past 
there were these gardeners coming down in 
waggons and telling the cattle man that his 
day was done and — ” he stopped short, aware 
of how he was maligning what had been given 
out as his occupation. At the same time Scotty 
turned slowly and surveyed him. 

There they stood : the lean, little Scotsman 
with his brows frowning and a grin breaking on 
his mouth, looking down on Apache Kid, making 
the drollest distorted face imaginable ; Apache 
Kid looking up at him, his head a little on one 
side, his eyes dancing with merriment. 

And then, in the chirring silence outside, we 
heard the rattle, rattle, rattle of a pump-car 
abruptly break out and come smartly nearer. 

I stepped out and there, just whirling round 
the bend, were four men on a pump-car, two 
going up and two going down, two up and two 
down, with a precipitancy that must have been 
something of a record. 


D 


50 HANDS UP! 

A little later on in the day I was to see a 
pump-car driven as swiftly, but I had never 
before seen such action. It thrilled me. There- 
was something magnificent in the rising and 
falling bodies, two forward, two to rear, coming 
thus, rattling, on the jump, into quiet Black 
Kettle. The first glimpse of the pump-car and 
the men suggested some pre-historic beast, 
come awake in these sunny sand-hills after a 
sleep of a million years, and cavorting down on 
the little depot. Up and down went the bodies 
and then the pump-car rattled alongside the 
platform, one of the men snapped “ Whoa ! ” 
and all four clung to the handles that had been 
going up and down for fourteen miles and 
stopped their motion. But before the car 
stopped, one of the men (who had been pumping 
facing the direction in which the car was urged) 
stooped carefully, to avoid a hit on the head 
from the still rising and falling pump-handles, 
lifted a little black bag and a jacket, and stepped 
neatly off to the platform. He was pouring 
with sweat. His white shirt clung to him and 
showed a solid, square little chest. In his 
mouth he held, daintily with his teeth, a pair 
of gold-rimmed eye-glasses. This was ‘‘ the 
Doc.” 

He saw me and said to me, setting down his 
bag with the jacket over it and taking his 
eye-glasses from his mouth : “ The Godam 

sweat blinds my Godam eye-glasses,” in quite 
a cultured voice. If Douglas had not given a 
moan within at that moment I think I might 


THE COWBOY PHILOSOPHER 51 

have smiled. No wonder that these better 
women who do not lecture us on swearing do 
sometimes smile at us for the ridiculousness 
of our pet swears. 1 remember once telling a 
dry stick of a man, very excitedly, about a 
storm, and saying : “ My mother tells me that 
she had a hell of a time in a storm oft Cape 
Horn.” He looked at me with a dry twinkle 
and said : “ Did the good lady really say so ? ” 

The Doc wiped his eye-glasses with a hand- 
kerchief and fitted them upon his nose. He was 
a capable man I thought ; for, as he was thus 
employed, one of the men on the pump-car 
was lifting on to the platform buckets of water 
which they had brought along with them. The 
Doc stepped into the agent’s room at the sound 
of Douglas’s moan ; and one of the men on 
the pump-car, wiping his eyes with the back of 
his hand, gave a little chuckling laugh. 

‘‘ Doc would make a heck of a section boss,” 
said he. 

“ Reckon we never got over a track like it 
before,” said another. 

“ I never did,” said the one who was lifting 
off the buckets of water. “ He made me laugh, 
did Doc, when the sweat got running on his 
glasses and he took them off and then couldn’t 
catch hold of the pump-handle again.” 

“ He got his knuckles rapped with the handle, 
I suppose,” said I. 

The man turned and examined me and evi 
dently 1 bore his scrutiny well. 

“ No, sir,” he said. “ But we were going 


52 HANDS UP ! 

to slow up for him to catch hold, and he yelled 
out to us to pump on. ‘ I’ll catch the Godam 
thing ! ’ says he. He makes me smile — ^the 
English way he nips his cusses.” 

“ He’s all right,” said another. “ I see he 
knew his business when he shouts out ; ‘ The 
water-tank ! Black Kettle ain’t got water 
at the dep6t, has it ? ’ and when we all says 
‘ No ’ — ‘ Good,’ he says, and we appropriates 
all the five buckets in the freight shed, fills 
’em full at the tank, and sets ’em round our 
feet. It seemed a heck of a lot to bring five 
full buckets — ^but it’s five half ones now,” and 
he nodded at the half -empty pails. 

Apache Kid came out to the platform abruptly, 
his sleeves rolled up, very alert, snatched up one 
of the buckets and hastened back again to the 
agent’s room. It struck me that I could be of 
assistance and I stepped quickly after him. 
One of the men who had helped to pump the 
Doc, having dried his face and neck, followed 
me. We passed inside and I saw Douglas 
propped up and the Doc bending over him, his 
black bag open at his side, steel instruments 
glinting in it, Apache Kid kneeling beside the 
Doc, mopping away with a sponge at Douglas’s 
head. I saw the Doc’s hand come up with the 
gesture of one sewing with a short thread. I 
had never been in a hospital. I had never seen 
an accident, and I felt horribly sick. Suddenly 
the man who had come in with me, a great 
hulking fellow, said “ Oh ! ” and staggered from 
the room on to the platform and I heard his 


THE COWBOY PHILOSOPHER 53 

boots give a foolish clatter, heard a grunt and, 
looking out, saw him in a dead faint outside. 
Some quite stalwart men are like that. 

“ Some more water ! ” I heard the Doc’s 
voice rasp and I leapt to a pail and lifted it and 
carried it in. 

“ That’ll do, you,” said the Doc to Apache as 
I entered, and Apache rose as I set the pail 
down. I felt better now, though I knew my 
face was cold. Apache said ; “ He’s all right 
now. Doc ? ” 

“He’s all right,” said the Doc, and fell 
to sponging and cleaning his hands in the 
bucket, staring at Douglas the while. 

Apache looked at me and said : “ Hullo, 

you look white.” 

“ Queer,” I muttered, “ I felt sick at first.” 

“ Yes,” he said, “ Even a man who can hold 
off a gang of Dagoes may feel sick when he 
comes suddenly up against this side of life.” 
He stretched erect and said : “ The only way 
to keep some sides of life from not making 
you sick is to get right in and do something. 
He’s all right, Doc ? ” 

The Doc looked up and took stock of 
Apache, evidently more carefully. 

“ All right sir,” he said. “ We’ll get him 
down to Lone Tree Hospital when the train 
comes in.” 

“Then I’ll get off to my appointment. So- 
long Doc. So -long Scot ! So-long Kid ! ” He 
trotted out. “ Hullo ! ” I heard him say out- 
side. “ Feeling bad ? Yes I know. Yes — it 


54 HANDS UP ! 

does make you feel mean, doesn’t it ? Well, 
when a man’s built that way there’s no mere 
looking on possible for him — ^he must either 
step right in and be of use, or step right out — 
go get him to a nunnery, so to speak. But 
there’s nothing to be ashamed about, sir. 
Ninety-nine out of a hundred can rubber-neck 
over the heads of a crowd at a dog in a fit m the 
gutter and neither go away nor help. That’s 
humanity. You can get sick, sir, when you 
aren’t helping anyhow. So-long ! So-long 
boys ! Where’s my bronco ? Oh, there he is. 
Hi! Hi! White-face!” 

The doctor was drying his hands, half kneeling 
still at the bucket, half sitting on his heels — 
a whimsical smile spreading on his face. 

“ Who is the cowboy philosopher ? ” he said 
as he put his towel in his bag on top of his 
instruments and cotton wool, and snapped it 
shut. He saw the cigarettes lying in the 
corner, stretched for one, wet it, and felt for 
matches. 

“ They call him Apache Kid,” said Scot. 

A light. Doc ? ” and Scot tore ofi a Chinese 
match from a block, lit it on his pants, and 
held it while the sulphur burned. 

The doc was looking at me, and Scotty 
said “ Damn ! ” as his fingers were burnt. 

“ You’ve been scrapping ! ” said the doc, and 
looked at my battered face, touching it lightly. 
“Oh I don’t think you need anything much. 
If you like, a little arnica — ^three parts water, 
and bathe that jaw.” 


THE COWBOY PHILOSOPHER 55 

“ This is nothing,” I said. 

“ Nothing by comparison,” he agreed and 
turned. Then he held his head forward and lit 
the cigarette at Scotty’s second match, and 
blew a cloud. The aroma of the weed filled the 
place very pleasantly. It seemed like vespers 
or a benediction. Douglas stirred, opened his 
eyes. He muttered something. 

“ Yes ? ” said the doctor and knelt to him. 

“ Give me a draw,” said Douglas. 

Past the window, in the glaring sun, back of 
the railway track, the white pony charged in* a 
quick lope with Apache Kid bending forward 
and urging it on. A whirl of dust rose and fell. 

There was a shuffle outside on the platform 
of the men who had pumped the doctor up 
getting into a shady place to wait for him ; and 
then again the silence, with the little ceaseless 
crackling in it, of the grasshoppers and, 
inside, the faint clicking of the operator’s 
instrument. 


CHAPTER IV 


NEWS FROM HOME 

I STEPPED over anon to the hotel for dinner. 
One or two men sat on the verandah with a 
hungry look and I eyed them with interest, 
wondering whence they had come ; among 
them sat, with a dictatorial air, a tall bearded 
man, with a lean, red face, bloodshot eyes, and 
a beard like dirty tow. He saw me advance 
and said he : 

“ Good-day. Are you looking for the pro- 
prietor ? ” 

“ Proprietor ? ” said I. “ I suppose he’s 
inside.” 

The man gave a hiccough and said : “ This 
establishment has changed hands. I’m the 
pro-prietor here now.” 

I saw the scattered men look at him curiously. 
They had the air of not taking part. 

“ Oh ! ” I said. 

“ Yes,” said he, “ Oh ! — as you say. Do you 
want lunch ? ” 

“ Yes,” I said, “ I came over for lunch.” 

“ Well,” said he, “ I’m very sorry, but I 
don’t intend to have lunch here except for 
residents. I can’t serve people passing through. 
Are you a hobo ? I don’t remember your 
face at all.” 

Now a hobo is a tramp, a beggar at doors, 
and so I looked this drunken new proprietor, 
as he called himself, up and down, and said I : 

56 


NEWS FROM HOME 57 

“ Seeing that I’m not going to eat at your 
house — not even if you put up a free lunch — I 
don’t see that you have any call to know any- 
thing about me. Good-day to you — and I 
hope you may flourish in your establishment.” 

I wheeled about and trudged back to the depot, 
more than ever conscious of my empty stomach 
and intending to ask Scotty if I could obtain a 
lunch anywhere else, consoling myself, at least, 
with the recollection of the tinned goods in the 
store — tinned salmon, tinned tomatoes, tinned 
everything, all round the store in the deep 
shelves. 

But hardly had I reached the platform, 
across the “ square,” than one of those who had 
been sitting on the verandah came after me 
with a “ Mister ! ” 

I turned about. 

“ Say, mister,” he said, “ that fellow ain’t 
the pro-prietor. The ho-tel ain’t changed hands 
at all. Lunch will be on within half an hour. 
He’s only a fellow who comes in from his ranch 
about once a month and thinks he’s a sure- 
thing wag. That’s what he calls his fun, 
going on like that.” 

“Thank you very much, sir,” I said. “I’ll 
be over again for lunch, then. Thank you 
very much.” 

“ Be careful of the wag,” he suggested. “ He 
sometimes gets nasty when people don’t see 
that he’s funny. The way you answered him 
just now puzzled him. He weren’t sure how 
to take it. He carries a gun— and I see you 


58 HANDS UP ! 

don’t.” And with a nod he turned back for 
the hotel, but I remained, for the time 
being, because the whistle of an approaching 
train broke out far off in the hills, and I 
wanted to be on hand to help to carry Douglas 
aboard. 

Scotty had come on to the platform at sound 
of the whistle, carrying a red flag. 

“ Going to flag this freight,” he said, “ and 
get Douglas in the caboose.” 

The locomotive with its string of sun-scorched 
cars came in sight ; Scotty waved his flag and 
the string drew slowly into the depot — the 
conductor dropping off to see why he had been 
stopped. 

“ It’s Douglas,” said Scotty ; “ he’s had an 
accident.” 

“ The hell he has ! ” 

So we carried Douglas into the caboose at 
the end of the string of cars. The pump-car 
on which the Doc had come up was lifted on to 
a flat car, the men piled into the caboose, the 
Doc followed — and away went the train. 

I was unsettled, restless. I felt that some- 
thing was going to happen. One does not often 
have such feelings in the sage-brush lands. 
Cities, jostling crowds, going up and down in 
elevators, hanging on to straps in crowded cars 
— ^these things breed the nervous sense of 
“ something going to happen.” The sage- 
brush makes one “ feel good.” 

It must have taken us some time to get 
Douglas aboard, for, when I looked over to the 


NEWS FROM HOME 59 

hotel, I saw that the verandah was deserted. 
The men had evidently gone in to lunch. 

“ When do you take lunch ? ” I asked Scotty. 

“ Eat lunch you mean,” said he. “ I eat lunch 
right now. When that freight goes through I’m 
free till the west -bound passenger. Are you 
going over ? ” 

“Yes,” I said. 

“ Wait for me, then, till I lock the door,” 
said he. 

“ I shouldn’t think you need lock a door here,” 
I said. 

“ It’s my instrument,” he said. “ I love that 
instrument of mine. I never leave it without 
locking the door. You come in and I’ll show 
you just what kind of instrument she is. She 
ain’t a railway one. I always pack my own 
instrument everywhere.” 

And so he carried me in to expatiate on it 
while my stomach cried more persistently for 
nourishment. The sage-brush lands nurture an 
appetite in a new-comer that is nothing short of 
fierce. I think Scotty talked for half an hour 
about his “ instrument,” waving his lean hands 
over it, talking about it in the way some parents 
talk about their children. 

Into us, thus employed, following a courteous 
knock, came the man who had strolled over 
from the hotel after me a little while back to 
explain about the waggish individual’s waggish 
attempt to make me have a lunchless day. 

“ Excuse me, gents,” he said. “ Lunch is 
pretty nearly through. If you don’t ” 


60 


HANDS UP ! 

“ Oh, they always save me my lunch,” began 
Scotty. 

“ I told the pro-prietor that you were wanting 
lunch, sir ” to me. 

“ We’ll get,” said Scotty, and waved his arm 
like a man herding hens, seemed to bundle 
us out of the room, looking at the new-comer 
sternly, as if he would bid him keep his eyes off 
the treasured instrument. 

We had come to the platform steps at 
the end of the depot buildings, the cowboy 
who had been so solicitous about my lunch 
a little in advance. 

“ What this ? ” he cried, looking across toward 
the hotel. There we stood and stared. The 
hay -beard person who was “ in town ” to have 
a “ good time ” was gathering up the reins of 
a very excited horse, a horse standing in the 
shafts of a light buck-board like a hound in 
leash. From far off as we stood even, we 
could see by the gestures of hay-beard, he 
sitting on the seat with legs out-thrust, that he 
was grandiloquently inebriated. A man ran out 
of the hotel door, dashed across the verandah, 
and snatched for the horse’s head. The horse 
swerved away. The man who had tried to 
catch its head vaulted over the rail ; but his 
feet sank so deep in the sand that he half fell.. 
As he did so hay-beard gave the whip a wild 
sweep, yelled, wheeled away from the hotel, 
and fiercely urged the horse. It plunged 
through the sand, found firmer footing on the 
waggon-road that twined past the hotel and 


NEWS FROM HOME 61 

up to the railway track, which it crossed on 
planks laid between the lines. Up came the 
buck-board, hay-beard wielding the long lash 
of the whip. He drove splendidly — too splen- 
didly. There was too much drunken swagger 
about it. He caught sight of us as he swept 
along the waggon-road, waved a mocking 
arm to us, wheeled the buck-board abruptly at 
the bend on to the track and — ^^vell ! The 
next thing we saw was the horse galloping across 
the track with a shaft hanging to left, a shaft 
to right ; the buck-board overturned ; hay- 
beard on his chest, legs in air, chin sticking out 
like one swimming, still clutching the reins. 
Then he went head over heels at the sloping 
planks that led up to the track and rolled over 
and over there. The horse simply crossed 
the track, wheeled about, flung its head up 
and, turning round, trotted back to the hotel 
verandah — and stood there. 

Out of the hotel poured the men, and ran in 
the direction of hay -beard. We, on our part, 
merely watched from the platform. Hay- 
beard rose, aided slightly by the man who had 
tried to catch the horse from the verandah, 
stood staring and feeling his side, felt his arm, 
and came over to the depot, the cluster of men 
to rear, with evidently the owner of the horse 
and buck-board strutting beside him with 
determined jowd. 

“ Is the Doc here ? They tell me the Doc 
is here. Is he gone ? ” asked hay-beard. 

“Yap ! Gone ! ” snapped Scotty. 


62 


HANDS UP ! 

“ I’ve broke my arm, by ! ” said hay- 

beard. 

Scotty stepped down. 

“ Let me feel ; ” and he felt the arm. “ May- 
be it’s only twisted. Yap ! Broken I ” 

“ When’s the next train ? ” 

“ You know the trains.” 

“ I mean a freight train. Any freight before 
the passenger ? ” 

“ Nope ! Not another ; ” and Scotty moved 
off. 

“ Oh wxll, I’ll set in the shade here and wait 
for the train ; ” and hay-beard, with his arm 
hanging loose, moved off to the end of the 
station buildings. 

“ Couldn’t you wire for the Doc again ? ” I 
asked. 

“ For him ! No ! He ain’t got no ap- 
preciation. He’s the kind of man if I wire for 
the Doc he would think me his slave — and he 
would like as not try to stand off paying the 
Doc his fee and I would go and offer to pay it 
and the Doc would be indignant and say ‘ Call 
off — Call off ’ — and that coyote would think 
he had done a smart deal. That’s the kind of 
man he is. Come and eat.” 

The little crowd thinned, even the owner of 
the buck-board departing w ith a mere : “ Well, 
mister, you’re going to pay for a new buck- 
board when you get on your legs again.” We 
went to “ eat ” lunch, Scotty and I, in the sun- 
blinded cool rear room of the hotel. 

There had been plenty of incidents in that 


NEWS FROM HOME 63 

day. But 1 still felt more looking on at a show 
than as if they were my own incidents. You 
understand me ? These were not my affairs. 

We ate lunch and sat on the verandah after- 
wards with the remaining boys. One by one 
they departed — disappearing from the verandah 
and anon re-appearing on horseback and riding 
out of Black Kettle, one (who carried no 
blanket roll on his saddle) riding away by the 
waggon-road across the railway and straight up 
hill. Another (who packed a blanket, I noticed) 
rode away back of Black Kettle into the great 
plain striped with brush, and anon with sand 
and anon with grassy stretches. From the end 
of the house one could see him fade in that 
immensity. 

1 sat there smoking, watching two more 
riders cross the track. I heard the flap-flap 
of the boards as the ponies stepped across the 
crossing, watched the horses go up and up — 
noted how they seemed, as they took the last 
roll, very tall, and their riders very tall, then 
how they went over the last roll like little boats 
over a wave, and disappeared. 

At last one said : “ It do seem a pity for him 
over there. Reckon I’ll step over and see how 
he’s making out,” and he stepped off the 
verandah and went ploughing over to the depot 
buildings. 

Just there he stopped and we who still sat on 
the verandah looked up. A frightful yelling 
broke out Westwards and grew louder. Then 
a metallic rattling. What was it ? Was it 


64 


HANDS UP ! 

the Dago gang ? Had they come by some 
liquor up there at the camp, and were they 
coming down to Black Kettle ? 

The rattling grew in volume — the rattle of a 
pump-car. There is a kind of agitation comes 
over one when any noise breaks out that one 
does not understand. It was a relief to re- 
cognise the sound of a pump-car. Then 
suddenly round the bend came two horsemen, 
riding parallel with the track ; they were 
whooping, screaming ; and on the track, urging 
their pump-car and whooping and yelling, came 
the section gang, the gang whose boss had been 
so decent to me. 

It was only an arrival in town. 

The men on the verandah smiled and tilted 
their chairs afresh and leant their backs to the 
wall, puffed their cigars into a glow. The 
horsemen, with final yells, rode clean up to the 
hitching -posts, flung ofl their horses, and came 
over to the hotel (less elegant on foot than on 
horseback, for they were both bow-legged with 
much riding) clattered up the steps and entered. 
The section men’s car slid into the depot beside 
the platform before they could stop it. They 
stepped ofl laughing. Then we saw them talking 
to hay-beard and presently hay-beard got up 
from where he had been lying limp, and with 
much grimacing with the pain, of his arm got 
over to the pump-car and stood on it. The men 
all piled on again and away they went, hay- 
beard propped in the centre beside the pump. 

“ That section boss is a very good sort,” said 


NEWS FROM HOME 65 

a man, bringing his chair down from the tilt, 
rose, said : “ Well, so-long, gents,” and de- 

parted. 

Scotty also rose, and stretched. 

“ Come over,” he said. “ I got to get over.” 

I strolled across with him, loafed for an hour 
or so about his door, merely acclimatising 
myself, letting the air of the place lull me, 
but still with that sense of waiting. 

“ Say ! I forgot to give you your mail,” 
said Scotty. “ Something for you,” and he 
handed me a fat packet that he had discovered. 

It was a bundle of Old Country papers from 
a New York agency. I opened them easily — 
thinking how cute I had been to write, 
before I went up to the extra gang, for 
Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, London papers, 
all together, and not to write for those only on 
and after the date of my encounter with the 
black-mailing tramp, but for a full month before 
that date. 

It was, of course, only the Glasgow Herald 
I troubled about now. I was the boy to cover 
my tracks, I thought. I was a “ cute ” in- 
dividual. I opened the Herald of the day 
after that trouble with the lurcher. I glanced 
it through. No — no “ Horrible Discovery.” 

I glanced through the next day’s. No, 
nothing. 1 looked through the Heralds for the 
whole week. Nothing I Nothing at all about 
the body behind the bushes. 

I looked up abruptly and found Scotty 
scrutinising me under his thin brows and biting 

£ 


66 HANDS UP ! 

the ragged end of his yellowed moustache. 
He let his gaze lose its intentness, did not look 
away, but gazed as it were absently through me. 

I returned to my perusal, but with a manner 
guardedly easy, looking up and down the columns 
more lightly ; I hoped not too lightly, lest my 
change of manner might but increase Scotty’s 
curiosity. Suddenly I saw this : 

“ The tramy who was found in the park over- 
looking Drummond Terrace three days ago and 
taken to the Western Infirmary has regained 
consciousness. Although he has clearly been 
assaulted, and is suffering Jr om injuries received, 
he will say nothing oj how he came hy his in- 
juries.** 

I sat back in my chair. I forgot all about 
Scotty again. I only thought : “I need never 
have bolted at all ! ” 

Scotty’s beloved instrument was tick-ticking 
and he bent to it. The tick-ticking went on. 
I sat looking at a muss of type, a haze of print. 
I sat with the papers on my lap, staring — and 
then, slowly, my eye seemed to focus to the 
print again. What was this ? I choked, and 
stared, and looked at the paper. 

Suddenly, at Jamieson Gardens, Jane Elizabeth 
Barclay. 

If that accursed tramp had been within reach 
1 would have killed him indeed then ! He 
lived — and my mother was dead — no need to 
ask how— of a broken heart at my non-appear- 
ance, at my disappearance. I stood up, so 
Scotty told me afterwards, and raising my fist 


NEWS FROM HOME 67 

to heaven cried : “ Oh, God ! Oh, God I Oh, 
God!’’ 

But at the time Scotty was eager on some- 
thing else and he only shouted : “ Shut up ! 
Damn it I ” 

I sat down it seems. The instrument ceased 
to click its long message. He turned to me and 
said : 

“ Say 1 Say ! What do you think ? The 
passenger has been held up at Antelope Spring.’’ 

“ Oh ! ” I said and sat with gulping breaths. 

“ Held up ! ” he shouted. “ Who by, do 
you think ? By the Apache Kid ! What do 
you think of that ? They’re going right 
through to Lone Tree — non-stop to get next to 
the Sheriff there.” 

“ Eh ? Oh — that’s very interesting,” I said. 

“ My God ! ” he cried. “ You — ^you’re bug- 
house ! ” And he fled out to pour his news into 
some more sane ears. 

I heard anon a whistle scream outside — 
heard the roar of a train coming into Black 
Kettle — ^heard it pass on, without cessation. 
The room hummed with its passage and clatter — 
and then a whistle beyond Black Kettle pealed 
out — another further off — ^and silence fell again. 


CHAPTER V 


GOVERNMENT BONDS 

Enter to me, where I sat among the piles of 
Old Country papers, the cowboy who had been 
so anxious about my lunch, a tall, rudely 
handsome man, with bright eyes and bad teeth ; 
in loose, cotton jacket, striped black and white ; 
and with leather chaps over his pants, belted 
and gunned in the manner of his kind. 

“ Cheer up, mister,” he said. 

I looked up, more in amazement at his attitude 
toward me, I think, more wondering what he 
bade me to cheer up over, than with any other 
thought. 

“ If you’re gone broke, why I have a few 
dineros and you just got to say the word and 
any little I can do — why there you are. I hear 
there’s the superintendent of the division coming 
up to see into the trouble at the gravel pit 
where you bin working. Your money from 
the railway is safe enough.” 

“It’s not that,” I said and rose and laughed. 
“ I didn’t think I looked worried about 
it.” 

He looked at the pile of papers on the floor, 
looked at me, looked at them. 

“ Bad news ? ” he asked. 

“ Very bad,” I said. And then : “ It can’t 
be mended. There — it’s past. It’s over.” 

He stood thoughtful a moment, hitched his 
chaps, put his thumb in his belt. 

68 


GOVERNMENT BONDS 69 

“ Do you want a job ?” he asked. 

“ 1 do,” I said. “ I don’t suppose I’m 
bound to wait here till the white gang comes 
to the steam-shovel.” 

‘‘ Oh ! ” he cried, “ that was the idee was it ? 
No, sir — not you. A man like you don’t want 
a moling job. I see — ^you was broke and so 
you went on with the Dago push till such times 
as the white gang would come along ? ” 

I nodded. 

“ Pshaw ! A man like you don’t want to go 
burrowing in no railway excavations. It’s an 
outsider’s job — making railways, hittin’ spikes 
in ties, and boltin’ on fish-plates, and fillin’ 
up trestle bridges. When I heard you was on 
the railway I took no note of you. Then I 
heard you was the one white man in a Dago 
push and I thinks to myself : ‘ He’s either 

plumb locoed, or else he’s too green to burn, 
or else he’s lookin’ for trouble.’ Then I heerd 
the way you talked to Mike Mills — him that 
meddled with Jamieson’s high-stepper. Jamieson 
says he’s going to get the price of that busted 
buggy out of him so soon as he comes back with 
his arm mended. I says to the boys : ‘ Is that 
there, then, the white gent that has been working 
with the Dagoes ? ’ — ‘ That’s him,’ they says. 
So I considered you was just ignorant here, 
though maybe wise where you came from, and 
a pilgrim in a strange land. That was why I 
stepped over to post you about Mike Mills’s 
wit. And now, friend, I’m riding over to the 
ranch and if you care to come with me — why — 


70 HANDS UP ! 

I guess there’s a job for you right there. You 
savvy horses do you ? ” 

I shrugged my shoulders. 

“ Steers ? ” 

“No,” I said. “I know a little about 
sheep.” 

He seemed quite taken aback. 

“ You ain’t ever bin a sheep-herder ? ” he 
asked plaintively. 

“No,” I said, “but at a place in the Old 
Country for two months every year I used to 
do nothing but work among the sheep.” 

“ I see — in your college vacation. College 
man you are ? ” 

I nodded. 

“ I’ve met no end of college men,” he said. 
“ I had a partner in the Panamint Country 
once — college man — Harvard — he was a team- 
ster. Then I took out once into the country 
back of the Tetons, a college gent who had come 
West to photograph elk. He was all right. 
He was quite a white man, and if he didn’t 
savvy a thing he asked and learnt. But he 
didn’t have to ask much. He had the savvy, 
and could figure out most things with looking 
at them thoughtful. Then once, right here, 
on this yere platform, there comes along a 
hobo ; he had got flung ofl the freight half way 
between here and Lone Tree. Some devilment 
makes me throw a lariat of friendship over him 
and corral him over into the ho -tel and put 
tongue-loosener into him — Harvard man — Oh, 
straight goods ! He wasn’t bluffing me. He 


GOVERNMENT BONDS 71 

told me a heap about his means of livelihood — 
low-down and mean and all that, from my 
point of view, made me sick now and then, 
but he had a kind of edge of humour on him 
that laughed at himself, and I was not out to 
criticise him, but to hear more about other 
kinds of life than my own. He asked me if I 
ever seed initials up on water -tanks. ‘Sure,’ 
I says. — ‘ That’s us,’ he explains. ‘ Now I 
put up my sign N.Y.Y.T.’ ‘ Like a registered 

brand,’ says I. — ‘ Sure,’ says he, very friendly, 
‘ And N.Y.Y.T. stands for New York Whitey. 
I’m the poet of the hoboes,’ he says and I asks 
him for one of his poems. It ha’nted me so 
that I got him to sing it three times, him being 
that full of song and stagger-juice. Here it 
is,” and my new friend (Panamint Pete, by 
the way, was his picturesque name) began to 
carol to me the ditty of N.Y.Y.T. in a friendly 
attempt, as I understood afterwards, to “ chirp 
me up some I ” He acknowledged his aim 
later, when we were better acquainted. I had 
no idea, at the time, of his sympathetic intention 
as he sang : 

“ It was at a Western water-tank 
One cold December day, 

Within an empty box-car 
A poor dying hobo lay. 

“ His comrade sat beside him 
With sad and drooping head, 

And patiently he listened 

To what his dying comrade said. 


72 


HANDS UP ! 

^ I am going, ^ said John Yegdom, 

‘ To a land that is fair and bright, 

Where the weather is always warm enough 
To sleep outside at night ; 

“ ‘ Where hand-outs grow on the hushes, 

And folks never wash their socks. 

And little streams of alcohol 
Come trickling down the rocks ; 

“ ‘ Tell my boy down on Clark Street, 

The next time his face you view, 

That Vve taken the Great Eternal Freight, 

And Fm going to ride her through, 

“ ‘ Tell him not to weep for me. 

In his eye no tear must lurk. 

For I am going to the land 
Where no man has to work ; 

“ ‘ Hark ! I hear that centre whistle, 

I must take her on the fly. 

Good-bye, my dear old comrade 
^Tis not so hard to die.’ 

“ He closed his eyes, he bowed his head. 

He never spoke again. 

His comrade left him lying there. 

And took the guts of an Eastbound train.” 

“Yes, sir, that’s the song of N.Y.Y.T. — 
New York Whitey — ^which he was named be- 
cause he was what they call prematurely grey — 
with a white head of hair that would have made 
anybody gentle with him, and fatherly. Well 
— say— ^o you figure on coming up with me 


GOVERNMENT BONDS 73 

and touching the boss for a job ? You can get 
your wages from Scotty here if 

Scotty entered and Pete turned to him. 

“ Say ! You could get this gent’s wages and 
hold them for him till such times as he calls ? ” 

“ Wages I Wages ! Say ! Have either of you 
touched my instrument ? Wages ! Wages ! 
Pshaw I There ain’t no wages ! The train’s been 
held up, by heck ! Express safe emptied.” 

“ You told me so an hour ago,” said Pete, 
“ and your little instrument’s been sneezing 
there powerful,” 

Scotty put his hand in his trouser pocket 
and drew forth a plug of tobacco with a bite out 
of it, took another bite, and sat down to his 
instrument. 

As it tip -tapped, Pete turned to me and 
quietly said : 

“ What do you think ? ” 

I nodded. 

“ Thank you very much. Yes, I’ll come.” 

“ That’s right. You can git a hoss from old 
Colonel Kemp over at the store. He runs a 
kind of livery stable. We’ll look in again, 
Scotty.” 

“ All right ! ” snapped Scotty, and off we 
went to Colonel Kemp, the silent old store- 
keeper of the gruff but amicable “ How-dos.” 

Yes, he had a “ hoss.” I would take care 
of it ? I could have it for two dollars up to 
the ranch. 

“ What about bringing it back ? When will 
we be coming in again ? ” I asked Pete. 


74 HANDS UP ! 

The Colonel rose from the tub on which he 
sat and staged at me. 

“ That’s all right,” said Pete. “ The colonel’s 
bosses can come home fifty mile, let alone 
fifteen. We raise sech bosses in old pigeon 
houses in this part of the world and they learn 
the homing instinct from the smell of the homers. 
Things is different here from back east.” 

I had but six dollars and out of that I paid 
the Colonel for the hire of a restive cayuse. 

I paid my bill at the hotel, bought a grey 
blanket at the store, as the blankets I had 
bought when going up to the gravel pit were 
still there ; and then we rode over to the 
dep6t, where I stepped off on to the platform 
and walked down to ask Scotty to see about 
getting my wages from the railway. 

“ Better leave me a note,” he said, “ so that 
I can show it to the pay-clerk when he comes 
along.” He pointed to a pad and pencil on 
his table. 

“ What shall I write ? ” 

“ I don’t know — say — ^there’s been a great 
hold up, Apache Kid and some other man not 
known — just the two of them. Eh ? Oh well,” 
he scratched his hair, already dishevelled with 
much scratching. “ Well — Oh heck ! — I don’t 
know. Say ‘ Dear Scotty, please get my wages 
due for work on Dago gang when the pay-clerk 
comes up. I shall call for them when I’m in 
town again,’ By heck ! A hold-up in this 
division — ^Apache Kid and another not known I 
Ah ! But that ain’t all ! Say, don’t you tell 


GOVERNMENT BONDS 75 

anybody ! I ought not to tell you this, but 
you are not everybody — ^they’ve not only got 
a haul of express money, but they’ve got a 
bunch of Government bonds ! Government 
papers I By heck ! Apache Kid is up against 
it this time. He was suspected once before, 
you know. I’m sorry. Liked that man.” 

“ So did I.” 

“ So you would, so would anybody. All 
right.” He snatched my hand. “ So-long — 
I’ll keep it for you all right,” and he tapped 
the note I had written. 

“ By heck. Government bonds ! ” I left him 
muttering : “ That’ll cinch up Apache tighter 

than anything.” 

But Scotty had not as long a head as the 
Apache Kid. A good many people were to be 
astonished at the use that the Apache Kid was 
to make of these Government bonds. 

I stepped out again, mounted the Colonel’s 
horse. We rode across the track, where the 
loose planks at the crossing said “ Whack 1 
Whack ! Whack ! ” under the ponies’ hoofs, 
and took the roll of the first bench out of Black 
Kettle. 


CHAPTER VI 

DIAMOND K 

We mounted up the rolls of the benches less 
inclined for talk than for relishing the motion 
of the horses under us. 

There was something, that I can find no 
word to describe so well as “ callousness,” 
had come into me — or perhaps I do myself 
an injustice, perhaps I was merely stunned 
with regret, remorse. The words of the news- 
paper announcement still danced before my 
eyes, but I refused to consider them. I could 
not. 

My deepest memory of these benches is my 
first. I seemed to look at them out of the 
torture of humanity and see them as amazingly 
great, spacious, and healing. Had I stayed 
over at one of these little hamlets down in 
some deep canon, with a dark river thundering 
past and the high canon walls shortening the 
day, I think, on receipt of the news, on com- 
prehending the needlessness of my flight, and 
considering the result of it, I should have gone 
mad and dashed myself into the turbid creek. 
Had I been in a city I think I should have run 
amok. And yet I do not know. When, later, 
I told Apache Kid something of these feelings 
(for I was to meet him again as you shall hear), 
he listened with a more robust thing than 
sympathy — ^with pity — and then, with puckering 
eyes looked into the distance, taking his pipe 

76 


DIAMOND K 77 

from his mouth and tapping his teeth with the 
stem in a way he had. 

“ Yes,” he said. “ I know. The trouble is 
that maiiy men who feel things that way only 
go and get drunk.” 

We rode up, Pete and I, silently, to the 
topmost crest, advancing into the golden sunset 
and lingering day, and turned around on the 
crest, with hands on ponies’ haunches looking 
back on Black Kettle. I remember a queer 
thought I had then that, as a kid, I had pictured 
myself sitting so, had sat so, aged seven, on a 
rocking horse, imagining. Some dreams come 
true. But we change. I had not thought of 
the manner of man I might be when the picture 
part of the dream should be fulfilled. 

We looked down into the valley and already 
the railway line was dwarfed. It was the 
merest, insignificant thread coming out of a 
hardly discernible little hole in the hill to North- 
East, sweeping round the foot of the benches 
and lost in the sand-hills South Westward. 
Even the handful of roofs of Black Kettle, that 
from the car windows looked so whimsically 
trivial in the landscape, seemed, from this high 
vantage, far more important than the railway. 

I was gaining a better -balanced view of things. 
We topped the rise, riding on, and then I gasped. 
I think a good tonic for human misery, and for 
human woes that lead us not through a narrow 
and darkened way into some better 'prospect 
but lead us instead into a cul-de-sac, is change 
of scene. We took the rise, and a high wind 


78 HANDS UP ! 

that stirred the bunch-grass and the sage- 
brush and flicked the horses ’s manes, came 
freshingly on my cheeks. But the great thing 
was, the farther view burst upon us : a valley, 
sloping and widening beneath us with the silver 
of a creek in its depth, with dotted trees low 
down, with belts of trees above, with the green 
and grey of bunch-grass, sage and sand still 
higher, and, far off, the white of snows glinting 
on the peaks of the loftier mountains. 

We took the slopes to left and rode on along a 
half trail, half waggon-road, feeling very high 
and airy. The valley had the appearance of 
knowing two periods of the day at once ; the 
Western slope already showed the hue of twi- 
light, the Eastern had the aspect of late after- 
noon, There was just that indescribable sense 
of warning spoke to one out of the colours, the 
lights and shadows, the kind of warning that 
savage peoples, living close to nature, perfectly 
understand ; as do those fashionable persons 
of the East, where it is the habit to ring thrice 
before dinner, understand the significance of the 
gong — ^to wash, to be finished dressing, to file 
into the dining-room. 

There was no attempt at ballasting on this 
half waggon-road, the passage of hoofs and 
occasional waggons giving a kind of surface 
hardness which made easy going for the ponies. 
They, too, freshened after climbing the benches, 
tossed their heads in preparation for a quickening 
lope. At a declivity they went with a swirl, 
at a rise they slackened. 


DIAMOND K 79 

Then suddenly raising my eyes I saw before 
us, by the trail-side, a little house. 

“ This here,” said Pete, “ that we’re coming 
to is what they call an experimental farm. A 
man they call Johnson has come along up here 
and reckons he can grow fruit-trees in the sand. 
We’ll pull up and bid him good-evening. You’ll 
find him a diversion.” 

But my intuitive sense, very distinctly 
wakening, and I aware of its awakening, told 
me that the cabin was deserted. It was not 
only the intense silence of the slopes told me 
no one was there. Town folk, or Easterners, 
may smile at this remark, and I do not blame 
them ; but it may have befallen them to come 
to some house in the city, to ring the bell, to 
hear the bell clang within, and to have felt 
somehow that it clanged in an empty house. 
I do not say an unfurnished house, but a 
house in which there was no human being. 
If my reader still disagrees — ^good, it is no 
matter ; let us shake hands and pass on to my 
yarn. Anyhow, the house was deserted. 

We rode up to the door. Only silence. We 
dismounted. Only the breathing of the ponies. 
Pete, with the reins in his hands, knocked at 
the door. 

“Maybe sleeping,” he said, “but I don’t 
think so. Seems to be from home.” 

He looked in at the little window. 

“ Say,” he said, “ the sight of that tea-pot on 
the top of the stove sure invites me in.” 

He went back to the door and pressed it with 


80 HANDS UP 1 

his palm several times, vigorously. Each time 
it gave a little. He gave a hard push and 
stepped back so that the door sprung. Some- 
thing fell within. He gave the door another 
push and it opened. 

“ Nobody in,” he said and put the reins of his 
pony over a hook at the door, and entered. I 
followed. 

“ Stove still hot,” he said. “ Well, we’ll 
make some tea and leave a little note to tell 
Johnson that we looked in in passing and that 
his blamed tea-pot looked so sociable that we 
took the liberty of using it.” 

He took up a stick, smartly whittled a pile 
of shavings into the still warm stove, blew upon 
them, dropped in a match, and presently we 
were tasting the rankest, but most relishable 
tea I think I ever imbibed. Pete sat on the 
little table, swinging a leg ; I sat on the edge of a 
bunk. 

“ Sorry about that Apache Kid,” he said 
suddenly. “ I worked with him once up Kettle 
River way. I remember the marshal of Baker 
City discussin’ hard cases with me, and saying 
that there Apache Kid was one of the most 
interestin’ so-called ‘ bad men ’ with whom he 
had ever had any dealings. Up at Baker City 
some of the old timers is as full of stories of the 
Apache Kid as a story book.” 

“ Well,” I said, “ I think I may say that I owe 
Apache Kid my life.” 

“ You mean up at the Dago gang ? ” he said. 

I nodded, thinking over the affair. 


DIAMOND K 81 

“ Can you recount that story ? ” he asked. 
“ It was only a kind of a hint of it I had from 
Scotty. Course we all knew something had 
happened when Douglas got his head smashed. 
I was going to ask Scotty for the rights of the 
story when he got plumb locoed over the news 
of the hold-up that he got off what he calls his 
‘ little instrument,’ of which he’s more fond than 
a widower of an only girl. There was no use 
asking him for the story then. Was it a Dago 
hit Douglas, anyhow ? Shorely not.” 

“ No, no,” said I, and I told him the whole 
story. I had just come to the point of saying : 
“ And when that white Dago, as I suppose you’d 
call him, came over to my side, and we stood 
there to put up what we both, I expect, thought 
was going to be the toughest fight of our lives, 
over the little rise above the pit — ^perhaps you 
know it ? ” 

“ I know it,” said he, “the old trail to Black 
Kettle goes down from here round that way, on 
to the other side of the valley.” 

We had, then, just got that length, and I was 
saying : “ W'ell, over the top, and sliding his 
pony down to us, came the Apache Kid with his 
revolver ” 

“ Gun ! ” said Pete. 

“ Gun,” said I, “in his hand ” 

“ What’s that ? ” said Pete suddenly, and 
rose, and I was aware that as we had talked the 
twilight had been running into night. His face 
was indistinct in this little interior, his rising 
form merged with the shadows behind it. 

F 


82 HANDS UP ! 

There was a slapping of ponies’ hoofs outside 
the door, a sound as of a cavalcade, a rush 
and a whirl, the creak of a saddle as some one 
flung off, dismounting abruptly, and then a 
“Hallo! Lookup!” 

Pete, who knew his country, relieved the 
situation. 

“ All right, gents,” he hailed. 

“ Who’s yere ? ” came a voice from outside. 

“ That you, Mr. Johnson ? ” said Pete. 

“Jt’s me. WTio are you ? ” Mr. Johnson did 
not come into his own shack. 

“ It’s Panamint Pete,” said my friend, step- 
ping out to the door ; “ your tea-pot kind of 
invited me in and I accepted the invitation 
which I knew you would have given. No 
offence, I hope ? ” 

“ No — ^that’s all right,” said Johnson’s voice 
and he came to the door. Suddenly he stepped 
back. 

“ Friend with you ? ” he said. 

“ That’s all right,” came another voice that I 
thought I knew, and very smartly past Johnson 
and Pete, with three lithe strides, came the 
other man. 

“ Apache ! ” 1 cried. 

“Hallo, Kid!” he said. “It’s you.” He 
struck a match on his pants, lit the lamp. 
“ Come in, gents,” he said. 

Pete stepped in, his eyes watchful in the new 
lamp -light. Johnson stood scowling. Pete sat 
down on a stool. He looked from Apache to 
Johnson, then back. 


DIAMOND K 83 

“ It’s all right, Apache,” he said. “ We’ve 
heard the news.” 

Apache swung round quickly, but not towards 
Pete. It w^as towards Johnson. 

“ He’s all right, Jake,” he said. “ And now, 
gentlemen, would you be so kind as to turn your 
faces to the wall and count twenty.” 

With a laugh Pete turned, and I turned also. 
There took place a great rustling as of stiff 
parchment, a muttering between Johnson and 
the Apache Kid, and then the Apache Kid’s 
voice : “ That’s all right.” 

Pete turned. 

“ Only got the length of eighteen, Apache,” 
he said. 

“You always were a white man,” said the 
Apache Kid. “ Some men might have counted 
forty in the time. Well, so-long boys. So-long, 
mister,” to me. 

I stepped over and held out my hand. The 
two train robbers moved outside smartly, we 
heard the saddles creak as they mounted. 
There was a “ Get up I Get up, you ! ” — and 
away they swept in the growing darkness. 

Pete strode over to the door and looked after 
them. 

“Two led saddle horses,” said he, “and two 
pack horses. They’re going to travel.” 

The dust fell on the road, the sound of the 
hoofs died abruptly. 

“ Well,” I said, “I’m the last man to set up 
as a judge of the Apache Kid, but do you know 
I was glad to shake his hand just now. It’s 


84 HANDS UP ! 

a very strange thing, but I never thanked him 
for what he did for me up at the gravel pit. 
All the way down to Black Kettle, with Douglas, 
I was trying to think out some way of thanking 
him. I would look at him and begin, and then — 
no, couldn’t do it. He didn’t seem a man that 
one could thank.” 

“ Yes, I know,” said Pete. “ Here’s to him, 
anyhow,” and he raised the tin panikin and 
drank the cold dregs of his tea. 

And then we put the log back against the 
door, opened the window, put a stick under it to 
hold it up as we crawled through, for it was 
innocent of pulleys and weights — crawled 
through, mounted under the first stars and rode 
on, took a narrow trail hitting off from this 
trail, and at length, in the deep purple of the 
valley, a light flashed up like a dropped star. 

“ That’s the Diamond K,” said Pete, and put 
spurs to his horse — ^which, indeed, hardly needed 
the spur, being as keen as he on that final 
spectacular rush home — let out a whoop, and a 
scream ; my pony, not to be outdone, stretched 
himself in pursuit, drew nearly level, and so, 
with Pete screaming like eagles and howling like 
wolves, we swept down on the Diamond K. 


CHAPTER VII 

APACHE IS SENTENCED 

As it was so late when we arrived we did not 
send the horse back that night, put him, instead, 
in a corral ; and next morning led him out, turned 
him head homeward ; he received a resounding 
thwack with the flat of Pete’s hand on his haunch, 
and ofl he went, loping away, lonely, to Black 
Kettle. A droll sight to my eyes, that riderless 
horse, loping away along the rough track. 

For the first fortnight there was nothing of the 
glorious life about it. Pete had been right in 
saying that work was to be had for the asking 
in his outfit ; but I spent my time “ bucking 
wood ” as they call it, and cleaning horses, 
helping the cook, and in any “spare time” 
shovelling the stable dung on to an old stiff-hide, 
which the stiff old “ chore-hoss ” would drag 
away and I would overturn beyond scent of 
the ranch -houses. I do not know that I was a 
very cheerful new hand. I have an idea that 
I was often scrutinised curiously when I was not 
supposed to see. And, indeed, I felt pretty 
glum. 

I was sensible enough, or callous enough, if 
that is the word, to know that Time would heal 
what, for the moment, I simply had to keep 
dismissing from my mind. The fatuity of my 
flight from Glasgow, if I pondered on it, was 
enough to have driven me mad. And I think 
it would be easy to go mad in such scenes, for 
85 


86 


HANDS UP ! 

there are times when the height of sky and the 
great sweeps of the land strike one as so high, 
and so vast, and so heedless, that, if one cherish 
any kind of contempt for oneself, one must 
inevitably feel more insignificant. 

Behold me, then, at the wood pile of the Dia- 
mond K, splitting wood, in my belt, as the 
phrase is, swinging the axe and scowling as I 
kept ousting the thought of my mother’s death 
from my mind. Behold me at the stable door, 
shovelling away on to the old hide, stopping at 
a hail from the cook (an old rheumaticky 
Virginian, who had known the old cattle business 
and showed it on face and form), and stoking 
his stove, winding up water for him from the 
well, or wiping my hands to mix flour for him 
when he was baking. 

The only relaxation was in listening to theories 
regarding where the Apache Kid might now be, 
and to stories of other road-agents, train-robbers, 
and the like, which the Apache Kid’s exploit, 
so close at hand, made the sole topic of con- 
versation. That was the only relaxation; 
that, and revolver practice, with a discarded and 
battered pot-lid tied on a pole for a target. I 
had my favourite horses and took a great interest 
in learning their little ways. There was one, a 
waggon-horse, that would not allow any one to 
come to it on the near side when it was in the 
stable without trying to pin whoever came so 
against the wall. Go into his head-stall on the 
off-side and he was wholly friendly. There 
was another that, every time it crossed the 


APACHE IS SENTENCED 87 

threshold of the stable, stood on its fore-feet and 
flung up its hind legs in a vicious kick like an 
attempt at a somersault. Nobody tried to 
cure these things. They were looked upon as 
individual characteristics. 

It was the custom, at the Diamond K, it being 
so near to Black Kettle, for some one to ride 
in once a week for the mail, but the Apache 
Kid’s little escapade was too interesting for 
us to lose any link in the story of it, and so 
every day saw some man ride into town. The 
owner, indeed, now a good friend of mine, got 
so excited over the hold-up and the chase that 
when, on the third day, he rode down to Black 
Kettle he simply stuck there. On the fourth 
day no one rode in, but on the fifth the foreman 
(now no friend of mine, and you shall hear why) 
took it upon himself to send a man in, ostensibly 
for mail. He saw the owner, of course, that 
bogus mail-seeker, but the owner was not the 
kind of man to jump on him. He told us that 
on his return the foreman had asked : 

“ Did you see the boss ? ” 

“ Shore,” replied the bogus mail-man. 

“ Asked you what you were in for ? ” 

“ Shore ; and I says : ‘ For news of Apache 
Kid and the great hold-up,’ and he gives me 
a stack of papers he had bought from Scotty. 
‘ Take these back to the boys,’ says he. ‘ The 
local colour was made in an office but they’ve 
got the facts anyhow.’ ” 

The local gossip from Black Kettle was carried 
home with that bundle of papers and discussed. 


88 HANDS UP ! 

The newspapers were read and re-read with 
much criticism — sometimes expression of disgust 
at a “ newspaper gent’s ” lack of “ savvy,” 
sometimes with expression of amazement at how 
much the “ gent ” knew. 

A further budget of Old Country papers came 
for me, handed over by Scotty with a message 
to say that the railway pay -clerk had not yet 
arrived, but he would remember. And in one 
of these papers, in three lines at the foot of a 
column, my tramp, or hooligan, w^as dismissed 
for ever with the words : 

“ The man who has been in the Western 
Infirmary suffering jrom injuries received in an 
assault has been discharged.'^ ^ 

I leapt up distractedly, and flung down the 
paper and trampled on it. I thought no 
one was near, for I had gone outside the bunk- 
house to read ; but the old Virginian was sitting 
outside at the gable end, having lived so long 
and heard of so many hold-ups that he was 
little interested in hearing the odd fragments of 
the story, content to wait for the finish. 

He rose and looked round the corner. 

“ ’Tain’t advisable,” he said, wagging a finger 
at me. “I knew a man with a face much after 
your kind who used to do that sort of thing 
frequent and free, and one day he tried not to, 
when something vexed him, and he went 
bug-house.” 

I laughed. 


APACHE IS SENTENCED 89 

“ Well,” said I, “ that means that he should 
have used his safety-valve.” 

“ Pshaw ! ” said the old fellow. “ I don’t 
know about that. I would advise rather that 
a man don’t have no call for safety-valves. 
Never do what you don’t want to do. When 
you want to do a thing, do it. If anything goes 
wrong — ^well, you’ve done your best. If it 
went wrong because of you — you know what to 
mend in future ; and I guess every man is always 
learning. If it goes wrong because of outside 
folks — well, that’s hoomanity, and men is 
mostly fools, like mules, and you don’t start 
out expecting them to be like horses. Some 
folks expect them to be like these yere Senators.” 

“ Senators ? ” I thought, “ Senators ? ” But 
I did not ask him what he meant. Only, coming 
nearer, I saw that he was reading a ’Frisca 
Sunday paper, discarded by the boys inside,, 
and on the first page it had, in the American 
fashion, a drawing in blent line and colour of a 
centaur, all mixed up with the columns of 
print ; and a great heading across the page 
blazoned forth the words : “ The Land of 

Centaurs — The Tehulches and Gauchos of Pata* 
gonia.” 

Just then the foreman came over to me, and 
said he : 

“ Say, what is your name ? I want to put 
you down in the pay -book.” 

“ Barclay,” said I. “ William Barclay.” 

The old cook, who had come stiffly along to 
lecture me and had sat down on the form where 


90 


HANDS UP ! 


I had been sitting, looked up, stared at me, 
looked down at the bench and puckered his 
eyes. 

“ Right,” said the foreman, and walked away. 

The old Virginian lifted from the bench the 
wrapper that had been around the English 
papers, sent to me from the New York agency. 
He lifted it up, frowned on it. 

‘‘ "John Williams,’ ” he read, "" "Black Kettle 
P.O. To be called for.’ My son — it ain’t my busi- 
ness, and I don’t want to hear ; but you see, as I 
said, a man’s always learning. This here Apache 
Kid that they are talking about wouldn’t do 
that. When you take to running water you 
don’t want to blaze a tree beside the creek to 
show where you went in and then blaze another 
to show where you come out. That would be 
plumb foolish. I hope, all the same, it ain’t 
anything serious.” 

Pete that day had gone into town, and in the 
evening, when the boys were all in, after all 
the latest news of Apache Kid, which was 
practically nothing, had been told, he turned 
to me : 

“ Oh ! ” said he, “ Douglas is back at Black 
Kettle. He was asking for you. Thinks a 
heap of you, he does. Scotty told him about 
you bringing him in, you and Apache Kid. 
‘ You tell that kid Williams,’ he says, ‘that if 
ever he wants to go back on the railway he has 
only to come up to me. And first time he’s in 
town anyhow, ask him to look me up.” 

The foreman, sitting at the table, looked up. 


APACHE IS SENTENCED 91 

“ Williams ? What did he call him Williams 
for — Barclay is his name,” said he. But as 
among ourselves we bore only nick-names it was 
not a question which any one was going to enter 
into with interest. Besides, there were news- 
papers to read so as to keep posted on the Apache 
Kid. 

The full story of the hold-up was being told 
by now in the papers. The engineer was inter- 
viewed, the conductor was interviewed and 
photographed, and his wife too. “ Conductor’s 
Wife Hears News. Plucky Woman,” said the 
glaring headings. 

“ ‘ A Former Hold-up Told by the Hold-up 
Man. Just Released from a Long Sentence,’ ” 
one of the men read out. “ What in thunder 
has that got to do with Apache Kid ? ” 

Grumbling, his voice went on reading down 
the headings. 

“ Oh say ! Now this is too bad. ‘ Apache 
Kid and the Kelly Gang of Australia. The 
Hold-up by Apache Kid Recalls the Doings 
of the Famous Kelly Gang of Australia ’ — and 
then three colyumes about the Kelly Gang of 
Australia. Say ! Now ! That’s a very or’nary 
kind of bluff.” 

It was on the sixth day after the hold-up that 
we had the astounding news of the capture of the 
Apache Kid. Excitement died a little then and 
we settled down to await news of the trial. 

He had absolutely no show, neither he nor his 
partner Johnson. But it made curious reading. 
The ranch above Black Kettle (that experimental 


92 


HANDS UP ! 

ranch where roses were to grow out of a heap 
of cinders, you remember) had been visited and 
it was proved that the experimental farm was a 
bluff. It was only a place from which to go 
forth to the hold-up. The land had been rented 
genuinely enough, rented for a year — and the 
first instalment paid, which looked as if the 
hold-up men had been certain of a big haul some 
time. Hold-up men don’t generally do things 
so deliberately. And besides that, there was 
a fair sum of money in the train they had 
robbed ; fifteen thousand dollars. How did 
they know of this ? Or did they know ? Was 
it by accident or design that they had held up 
the train on that special day ? 

These were the facts of the hold-up, shorn 
of all unnecessary embellishments. 

At Placer, Johnson, who had been down there 
looking at some experimental fruit farms where 
some fruit growers were working on the irriga- 
tion principle, had boarded the train. At 
Antelope Spring the Apache Kid had come 
aboard and just after the train pulled out, when 
the conductor had passed through to the end, 
they had walked on to the forward platform 
of the first pullman. Apache Kid had marched 
straight on into the baggage-car, very quietly, 
indeed, with a paralysing suddenness. Johnson 
must have jerked open the door for him for he was 
in the doorway before the baggage-man and the 
express-man were aware, with a heavy revolver 
in either hand, and the wonted : “ Throw up 
your hands ! ” 


APACHE IS SENTENCED 93 

One safe was open, I do not know why, but 
I have heard of open safes on trains before 
The other was shut. To begin with Apache bade 
his men to keep their hands up and then, drop- 
ping one “ gun into a pocket, he rummaged 
the contents of the large safe. into a bag, walked 
backwards to the door, dragging the bag thither, 
dropped it there. Then he ordered the express - 
man to open the other safe. The express-man 
said he had no key, told Apache Kid that the 
keys were in duplicate, and that one was kept 
at either end. Apache, with his other “ gun ” now 
in his left hand, plucked forth again, after 
dropping his bag at the door, walked over to 
within seven paces of him and said : 

“ I’m going to count three. When I say one 
I expect you to think about it, when I say two 
I’ll expect you to drop your hand and fork out the 
key. You have a little Derringer in your vest 
pocket. Don’t try to touch it. A Derringer 
is small. It’s a good ‘ gun ’ for a vest pocket ; 
but without arguing whether you’d get it out 
slick enough, allowing even that you could — 
which I guess you couldn’t ” (and he laughed, 
a mad laugh that I was yet to hear more of), “ I 
guess it wouldn’t kill me instantaneously — and 
then I’d plug you sure. Now then — One ! ” 

The express-man stood firm. 

“ Two ! ” 

The express-man went pale but stood firm. 

“ Three ! ” 

Apache Elid pressed trigger but it missed fire. 

“ Hm ! ” he said. “ It won’t do that again. 


94 HANDS UP ! 

It doesn’t happen twice. And I may tell you 
that if you don’t act at two this time, you and 
this other gent both get it,” and he nodded deter- 
minedly and said : “ One — ^two ! ” very quickly. 

“ All right,” said the express-man. 

The baggage-man said at the trial : 

“ I got to admit that I don’t think that was 
a miss-fire. I think that chamber had no shell.” 

There was a gasp in the court and Apache 
Kid broke out : 

“ You’re right, sir ! But I wasn’t going to 
say anything about that. Some other humane 
person in my profession might try the same 
bluff, and I didn’t want to spoil him if he did. 
Now he daren’t ! I don’t mind telling you 
that when I saw what kind of man — ” and he was 
ordered to be silent ; but reporters suggested 
the hiatus was : “ — when I saw what kind of 
man the express-man was I knew he would 
be moved if I said I’d kill both of them.” 

It is well known how such incidents weigh 
juries. A bit of fine gallery play, if only it be 
good enough to seem not gallery play but the 
“ real thing,” will weigh immensely ; in France 
perhaps more than in America. Of late years 
it has been very noticeable in English trials, 
though in England it generally leads not to the 
pardoning for the sake of a sentiment, but to the 
conviction of one, the making of him into a 
scapegoat, this especially if it is a dull season 
and what are called “ the pipers ” have had 
time to get photographs of everybody concerned, 
and one of the suspected persons happens to have 


APACHE IS SENTENCED 95 

a wart on the top of his head, or some such thing 
that offends public taste. 

The judge seemed in a panic lest Apache Kid 
might say too much and win the jury’s heart. 
Johnson was safe enough ; he would not come off 
worse than Apache, for Apache was the leader 
of the action. The jury, listening to the story 
as mere men, might think Apache was the better 
man and consider that Johnson had a snap, but 
they Qould not make Johnson the scapegoat in 
face of Apache’s leading in the hold-up. 

The safe was opened to him at the word 
“ Two ! ” on that second attempt. He treated 
its contents as he had treated the contents of 
the first, and backed to the door with them in 
a bag. 

One of the journals contained an interview 
with the makers of the special kind of bag 
that was used — ^to give the public something 
at least connected with the case while the chase 
was yet hot after Apache Kid, and before it could 
be either said that the robbers had got clean 
away or, on the other hand, that they were 
certain to be captured. 

I give you the story in the way I got it — 
bits of gossip from Black Kettle, an article in 
this paper, an interview in the next. 

On the steps Johnson stood guard. What 
was he supposed to do there ? He was asked 
that question point-blank at the trial. 

He laughed and said ; 

“ Why, shore, if the conductor had come out 
there again I would have politely asked him to 


96 HANDS UP ! 

keep me company a spell, told him that there 
was a gent in the baggage car transacting a 
little bit of business at which he must not be 
interrupted.” 

But the conductor did not come out. A mile 
on the other side of Adobe, Apache stepped over 
to the two men, with whom he had been chatting, 
or rather, before whom he had been conducting 
a monologue, and annexed their weapons, for 
both were armed. Then, with a warning to 
them to stay where they were till the train not 
only stopped, but had started again, he retired, 
backwards, covering them still, and gave Johnson 
a leg up to the baggage-car roof — no mean feat 
of gymnastics that, for the baggage-car roof had 
overhanging eaves. Then Johnson ran along 
the roof, jumped to the tender, and held up the 
engineer. 

“ What did he say, engineer ? What were 
his words ? ” 

“ Oh, he just says : ‘ Say, engineer — ^pull her 
up ! ’ ” 

“ And you pulled her up ? ” the engineer was 
asked. 

“ Yes — he had a Colt in his fist and he had 
the drop on the cab from the tender.” 

The train pulled up. Apache Kid, on the 
instant, had fiung ofi the two bags, leapt of! 
himself and ran back from the train to where 
he could have an eye on the engineer, and on 
the baggage -car platform, and the platform 
of the first car. 

The conductor came running forward when the 


APACHE IS SENTENCED 97 

train stopped. Johnson was jumping down via 
the tender, so the conductor did not see him. 
Apache hailed the conductor : 

“ Get back into that car, conductor — lively ! ” 

Johnson, alighting at the track side, waved 
a “ gun ” at the engineer, called out “ Go ahead ” 
and the engineer was only too eager. 

“ Did you see any one waiting where they 
got off ? ” 

“ No.” 

“ You saw the horses ? ” 

“ No ; I expect they were back in the bushes.” 

Apache Kid was asked if there was any one 
holding the horses. 

“ You are doing the trial,” said he, “ you’ll 
have to find that out — ” and again was called 
to order. 

The train sped on to Lincoln, not stopping 
at either Black Kettle or Lone Tree and there 
the Sheriff had an Indian tracker ready from 
the Lincoln Reserve and a posse sworn in ready 
to go back to the scene of the hold-up. 

The judge commended all this promptitude, 
and commended the railway servants for getting 
a special train into the siding at Lincoln, ready 
to go East. The Indian tracker from Fort Lin- 
coln reservation accompanied the posse, sworn 
in by the Sheriff, the special train ran back. 
The papers were very glad of that Indian 
tracker. He gave them a help in keeping up 
the interest during a lull. There was an 
article (and a very good one too), in the Times 
on “ The Redskin’s Sixth Sense.” 


o 


98 


HANDS UP 1 

I have seemed to jest too much about “ the 
papers,” and so I had better say that that 
article I cut out and kept with one or two others. 
You will think I am only mentioning this fact 
to show what a good judge of letters I am ! It 
was initialled with initials I did not know at the 
time — ^but in after years I came to know them 
as the initials of one of America’s most interest- 
ing writers on matters pertaining to all the 
“ Back of Beyond,” from the forgotten trails of 
Arizona to the men who keep the line secure 
in Alaska. 

There was no doubt that Apache Kid’s hold-up 
made a stir. There was still a deeper reason than 
the reason merely of the doing of it. It came out 
that a great deal of money had been going on that 
train, and many people wanted to know how 
Apache Kid and Johnson knew of it. Had they 
“ somebody back East in the know ? ” Was 
there some magnate, some man in high places, 
before a roll-top desk, frock-coated and tube- 
trousered, and immaculately groomed, instead 
of in hand-me-down store clothes, with chaps 
over his pants, and dishevelled hair under Stetson 
or sombrero ? But not even a slick reporter, 
with that suggestion behind him to egg him on, 
could find a great secret of intrigue. It made a 
fine heading picture, a road-agent shaking hands 
across the top of six columns of print, with a 
double-chinned, clean-shaven gentleman, in the 
neatest Broadway cut. But there was no 
reading matter to make the picture good, as they 
say. The reading matter only suggested. Per- 


APACHE IS SENTENCED 99 

haps a shrewd guess that, if there were such 
a person, he would not be found, made the 
editor decide to use the heading over the article 
that suggested his probable existence instead 
of holding it over to head the account of his dis- 
covery. Besides, if he did exist — and were dis- 
covered — his discovery would need no picture head . 
It would be a big enough matter without that. 

It was rather amazing to learn, after such a 
daring performance, that the road-agents had 
been run to earth within a week, surrounded, 
held up with their boots off, both sleeping by 
the fire — and never a shot fired. 

All that Apache Kid said when he woke to the 
hail of “ We’ve got you covered ! ” was : 

“ Well gents, you might have made a record 
for quick capture on somebody else. We never 
expected this. You see, we reckoned we might 
get but little sleep next week, so we were taking a 
little this.” 

The judge broke in that it was not necessary 
to hear what persiflage the prisoner had indulged 
in. It was well enough known, he said that 
representatives of the law and road-agents, 
and men of such kidney, often (as it is called) 
“ josh ” one another. 

“ There has been too much,” said he, “ of this 
irrelevant comment.” 

There is no doubt that the judge wisely saw 
the danger of Apache Kid’s insouciant methods 
creating a picturesque glamour round him and 
blinding the jury to the fact of a very calmly 
planned, well-considered hold-up. 


100 


HANDS UP ! 

Its perpetration had indeed been long in the 
minds of the two men, if of no others, their sus- 
pected accomplice in the East, and the possible 
holder of the horses at the place where they 
alighted. The experimental farm was a bluff to 
keep them in the vicinity. They had built their 
shack there, but had done little besides. About 
all they had done was to make a rough irrigating 
sluice, such as placer miners use, from a little 
lake in the benches. To the eye of the scarce- 
interested, somewhat aloof and bantering cow- 
man, riding past, it looked as if some work 
was being done. The sluice was visible, and 
boards had been hauled from Black Kettle and 
were stacked beside the shack as if there was 
intention to continue the work. That was all. 
Another man, higher up the valley, one Mike 
Mills, was similarly employed and had been there 
long before Johnson arrived — so the irrigating 
ditches were thus less of a novelty. 

I began to suspect that Apache Kid was the 
chief mover in all this. He had been in the 
country some time — ^had worked a year on the 
range of one of the chief cattle companies. It 
seemed odd that, when Johnson came in to ex- 
periment with vegetables, Apache should quit 
the ranch and hire on with him. The hold-up, 
too, was chiefly in his hands. At the trial 
he was more to the front. Johnson may have 
been nominally the boss at the ranch. Apache 
was boss of the hold-up. 

The trial hung fire a few more days while 
further evidence-— -as if there were not sufficient 


APACHE IS SENTENCED 101 

already — ^was sought for. At the Diamond K 
work went on as usual ; and sport too, in the 
evenings. The everlasting poker was played. 
Our rope expert practised “ stunts ” outside. 
Pete and I shot at the pot -lid. I got a discarded 
revolver to practise drawing and snapping with, 
for Pete explained that to snap an unloaded 
revolver much spoiled the action, and to practise 
drawing and potting with a shot every time 
would run away with too much ammunition for 
a poor man. But that very night, on which 
we received the report of the first day of the trial, 
I ceased to be exactly a poor man, for one of the 
boys who had ridden into town brought me my 
railway wages from Scotty. I don’t suppose I 
was named by Scotty. It would likely be : 
“You know that fair young fellow that’s just 
gone up to your outfit ? You give him this ; ” 
so far as this matter went there was no con- 
fusion. What I was called among the boys, if 
ever I was mentioned, would be simply “ the 
cook’s bitch.” When I was addressed directly 
I was “ Scot ” because of my accent. 

To us all this man brought news which Scotty 
had received over the wires, of Apache Kid’s sen- 
tence (and Johnson’s too) — Johnson, fourteen 
years ; Apache Kid — life ! 

Again a day or two’s expectancy and then came 
papers with the full account of the trial. 

“ Well, that’s the end of that,” said the 
foreman. 

“ No, it ain’t,” said the man, who had been 
into town that day. “ I got a crusher to 


102 HANDS UP ! 

tell you. Scotty — ^the brass -pounder — is bug- 
house down at Black Kettle. Came tearing 
along the platform to tell me, seeing I wasn’t 
everybody and could keep it Q.T., an astounding 
piece of news — what do you think ? ” 

“ What ? ” 

“ He says there’s some arrangement for the 
papers to keep dark about it.” 

“ Oh, pshaw ! Them papers — ” and the fore- 
man indicated the paper -carpeted floor — the 
papers under bunks, the pictures from them 
tacked on the wall. 

“ Well,” said the man, “ Scotty told me 
with his eyes sticking out like a frog’s when 
a swamp runs dry, that the Apache Kid and two 
troopers were coming down the line from Fort 
Lincoln.” 

“ What ! ” we cried. 

“ That’s what. Apache Kid and two troopers 
coming down from Fort Lincoln to-night by 
special train. He thinks they’re going down to 
where the hold-up was. What’s that for ? 
He’s sentenced already and by rights he’s in the 
Pen’, and begun his hard labour — and here he 
is travelling down the line in a special cyar like 
a millionaire, with Government attendants.” 

“ Queer story,” said the foreman. “ Was 
there a mail for the boss ? ” 

“ Yap.” 

The foreman departed. When there was a 
mail for the boss he always went over to the 
boss’s bungalow lest there might be some 
special instructions to give. 


APACHE IS SENTENCED 103 

As it happened there were. He came back 
presently, into the talk, with a letter. 

“ Say,” he said, “ you, Steve — and you — and 
you,” selecting three men, “ you start right 
away in the morning. There’s a letter here 
from the X Diamond X to say that a bunch of 
our steers is on the headwaters of Number Three 
Creek. You know that bit of country, Steve, 
don’t you ? ” 

“ Yap.” 

“ Well, you start right out to-morrow. Tell 
the cook to-night that you’re going. It’ll take 
you a week I guess. He says they ain’t bunched 
very good, but straggling up and down in the 
gulches.” 

In the old days, I may mention, this kind of 
thing was unknown, but in my time it was one of 
the common events of ranch life. In good 
weather, and if the ranches passed en route 
were friendly ones, such a trip was looked 
forward to. 

I wished I might go off with these boys. It 
would be an experience. But in the morning 
they were gone and there was I doing what is 
called “ jumping lively into the wood pile.” 

The foreman came over and looked at me. 

“ Say,” he said, “ you want to quit that. 
You go and saddle that sorrel with the streak 
down its back, and take your blankets, and get 
some grub from the cook, and pile after these 
three men. You know the way. Down by the 
waggon road from Black Kettle, but when you 
get down about five mile you’ll see a trail 


104 


HANDS UP ! 

cutting across to West — it’s clear enough — and 
there’s a blaze anyhow on a fir where it takes 
off. You go on there, it’s maybe till noon, and 
then the trails fork again. The one straight on 
is the Three Bars. You take the other ; but if 
you burn the trail some you’re liable to catch 
them up thereaways. I guess you can fry bacon 
and beans and flip a flap-jack ? ” 

“ I guess 1 can now,” said I, and laughed, 
“ and make bread too.” 

I went off as gay as a chipmuck, speeding 
down the waggon road towards Black Kettle 
with my eye lifting for the blazed fir which, of 
course, I had not noticed on my way out to the 
ranch, it being dark on that occasion. 


CHAPTER VIII 

AT THE HOLLOW TREE 

The pony was fresh and I let him take the 
gait he wanted, rejoicing in his motion under 
me, the flip-flapping of sand from his hoofs, 
reminiscent of the spraying of waves from the 
cut-water of a sailing skifl. I prefer the long 
stirrup leathers of America to the short ones so 
much in vogue in the Old Country ; I, for 
one, get into better harmony with the horse, 
riding so. 

Away we went, bringing the solitary pine 
tree by the trail -side closer. I chanced to look 
round once, and a pennon of dust behind the 
horse’s heels exhilarated me. It seemed to 
swirl away behind about the eighth of a mile — 
like the flying wake of a sailing skiff. I promised 
myself, sometime, when my horsemanship im- 
proved, to ride lying back with my head on the 
pony’s haunches, seeing nothing but the sky over 
me and imagining myself on Pegasus. 

And then came into my head my sorrowing 
mother as last I had seen her ; anon ticked in 
my ears Scotty’s beloved instrument as we 
flip -flapped forward. Loose ends of recent 
occurrences fell away altogether when at the 
bend I saw, ahead of me, a little flutter of dust. 
It struck me that the three cow-punchers, on 
whose track I sped, must have ridden very 
easily. Then it struck me that the little cloud 
was not passing ahead of me, but drawing nearer. 

105 ' 


106 HANDS UP ! 

It fluttered and was dissipated downward, and 
there was disclosed — ^nothing at all. 

I could hardly think it was a dust whirl in a 
wind, for it had quite the appearance of the dust 
raised by loping hoofs such as my pony was 
raising in less volume. I rode on, wondering a 
little, and then came to the high fir with a blaze 
on it, standing back from the trail on which 
I had been riding, and saw the old trail running 
past it. It was here that I had seen that 
flutter of dust. 

“ Perhaps,” thought I, “ it was, after all, Steve 
and the others ; and I saw the cloud just as they 
turned aside. Perhaps they had made a dash 
into Black Kettle to hear more of the strange 
story about the Apache Kid and two troopers 
coming down the line. No ! They could not 
have ridden to Black Kettle and back to this 
point in the time. And yet the cloud that I 
had seen had been advancing to this point as if 
from Black Kettle. 

My pony whipped about a little here, having 
evidently expected me to ride straight on, taken 
unawares by the pull of the off rein and the 
pressure of the near thigh ; and as he wheeled 
in the agitated manner of these Western ponies, 
I looked at the sand of the trail. I could see 
the fresh marks, of the hoofs that I had been 
following, turn aside here ; also there was 
another fresh track coming from Black Kettle, 
wheeling round here too and whelming with 
the track of Steve and his two companions. 
Perhaps, in telling the story to you now, you. 


AT THE HOLLOW TREE 107 

because of the clue of my title, if nothing else, 
have your suspicions aroused ; I, at the time, had 
no suspicions. I merely rode gaily on down the 
trail. 

Up hill, down dale, a rise and a dip, a rise and 
a dip, a rise — and then I reined up ; for, below 
me, beside an old withered tree with a great 
cavity in it, were two blue -coated troopers and 
another rider whom I at once recognised as the 
Apache Kid. Something in the air made me 
rein up. I remember how I took in the whole 
sweep of this dip, saw a long-eared jack-rabbit 
scuttling up hill and bounding off, saw some 
little chipmucks on the slope jumping on 
stones — sitting up like six-inch kangaroos, jump- 
ing between stones, jumping up again and sitting 
with heads as incessantly twitching left and 
right as some little wren in an English hedge. 

I saw Apache Kid back his horse away from 
the two troopers, stretching his legs out from 
its flanks ; I saw him make a gesture of his hand 
to the hollow tree. One of the troopers sidled 
his horse closer to Apache’s pony. The other 
trooper, looking almost suspiciously at Apache 
(I noticed the turn of his head), shook the rein, 
rode smartly to the tree, dipped his hand. 
Apache raised his head and said something to 
him, then gave his attention again to the trooper 
by his side. 

The trooper by the tree drew off the thick 
gauntlet from his right hand, thrust his arm in the 
hollow again, more deeply, and then drew forth 
a sheaf of papers. 


108 HANDS UP ! 

And just at that, too quick for me to follow 
the action, I saw a quick motion on the part 
of the trooper who sat his horse beside Apache’s, 
saw a quick motion of the Apache Kid ; he had 
grasped the trooper’s wrist. 

He who had drawn forth the bundle of papers 
was thrusting them under his thigh with his right 
hand, turning his horse about with the left. 
Apache adroitly backed his own horse, kicked 
the horse of the trooper, whose wrist he had 
grasped, in the belly, so that he drove it forward, 
and thus put this man between him and the 
one who had drawn forth the papers. A deliber- 
ate dog that latter ! He took his revolver from 
its holster as a slaughter-man might take the 
knife to cut a trussed sheep’s jugular and rode 
towards the two. He was going to make 
no mistake of it. 

I sat spell-bound for a moment, looking on ; 
then I put spur to my pony so sharply that he 
leapt forward as if he had been ejected from 
a spring gun, and I held my revolver up as Pete 
had taught me, raising and lowering my fist so 
that every time I brought it down I had the 
trooper covered. 

All looked up and saw me. 

“ Don’t shoot ! ” I shouted. 

Perhaps it was as well that this was my 
first adventure of the kind ; there are times 
when greenness is a defence. Had I shouted 
the more usual “ I have you covered I ” or 
“ Throw up your hands ! ” I am inclined to think 
that the trooper might have let fly at Apache, and 


AT THE HOLLOW TREE 109 

chanced me. As it was he held up, as if to 
discover my business and so, reining up, I came 
down into the dip deside them. 

The belligerent trooper sat with his gun-hand 
lowered ; I rode down with my hand raised 
and looking along the sights, my hand as steady 
as if that trooper’s head was the pot-lid on the 
twisted juniper behind the horse-corral back at 
the Diamond K. 

Apache Kid’s voice broke out ; 

“Thank you, my son. If he budges that 
right hand then let her go. It’s too good a hand 
to pass, and if you do pass this one you’ll never 
sit in to another game.” 

' I felt the beginning of a nervousness. I felt 
the beginning of a self-consciousness — a tremor 
in my hand. 

“ Drop that gun ! ” I said to the trooper ; and 
when I heard my own voice snap out I knew 
how very deeply I meant it. 

So did he. He gave me one short look that 
was as full of the longest thoughts as any look 
I had ever seen up to that date . Then he dropped 
his gun. 

Apache and his man were still performing a 
kind of mounted wrestle, the trooper wriggling 
his wrist, Apache holding on. The devilment of 
the thing woke in me ; I rode over and, my gun- 
hand raised, calmly lifted the holster flap on the 
trooper’s saddle, while Apache’s left hand slipped 
across and appropriated the weapon. 

The troopers had still their rifles in the buckets, 
but it was safe for Apache then to let go his hold. 


110 


HANDS UP ! 

He backed his horse from them ; I also backed 
a little, keeping both under surveillance, for 
Trooper No. 1 was up to some game. His 
mount was twisting and twisting and twisting 
in the sand, not wholly because of its own 
nervous build, for I could see the trooper’s 
thighs pressing. He was looking powerfully 
thoughtful. 1 think he was speculating on the 
chances of a strategic wheel and the throwing 
up of his rifle ; but Apache saw it all. 

“ Well, gents,” he said, and he tapped his 
chest. “ I have my paper here, you have your 
papers there. If I was sure that this little 
game of yours was all your own I would plug you 
both and leave you here with the bonds, ful- 
filling my part of the bargain; but I don’t 
know but what you’ve been put up to it. You 
can have the benefit of the doubt. Go on ! 
Mosey ! ” 

Trooper No. 1 backed his horse, backed and 
backed. Apache had his gun-hand raised with 
the confiscated gun at the ready, so I ceased 
to devote my attention to his man, but kept an 
eye on Trooper No. 2. But Trooper No. 2 was 
not going to risk laying a hand to his rifle. 

“ Mosey ! ” said Apache to him in turn — and 
he “ mosied,” not backing from us like the other, 
but riding slow, and laughing to himself, back to 
the trail. 

As they mounted the hill over which I had 
just ridden on them, Apache and I rode up the 
hill ahead, cutting across it diagonally, looking 
back on the two troopers. When they had 


AT THE HOLLOW TREE 111 

fairly gone on the back track Apache turned to 
me and said no word of thanks, merely held out 
his hand, which I took, and leaning each to each 
from our saddles, we grasped hands warmly. 

“ Where on earth did you come from ? ” 1 
said. 

“ From going up and down on the earth, from 
wandering to and fro,” said he, and I can re- 
member still the strange look in his eyes, some- 
thing lurking in among their speckled hazel as 
he turned his head and looked at me. It was like 
the imp that looked out of the bottle. It stands 
to reason that there was some kink in that man. 
I ignored the warning of devilment in his eye 
at the time. He had saved my life, I had saved 
his, and though he was a road-agent and so forth, 
as far as he and I were concerned there had been 
nothing but straight dealing. With me he was 
white — ^and would always be white. And yet 
there was that look in his eye then. I suppose 
I had spotted that in him which brought him in 
the end with his back to the old Pueblo wall 
at The Triangle outfit. 

“Well,” said he, and I let slip from me the 
discussion that had begun in my own brain, very 
quickly, as to whether I had got into exactly 
what you might call “ good company ” ; “1 
have just come back,” said he, “ from a very 
horrible place that must be nameless. As I 
daresay you have heard,” his voice was what, 
as boys, we used to call simply “ cheeky,” “ I 
was recently tried on a charge of having held 
up the Chicago Sonoma, and S.W. The evidence 


112 HANDS UP ! 

was absolutely all against me ; which, consider ^ 
ing I was guilty, seems a little droll.’’ He gave 
me the imp twinkle again. “ At any rate I was 
sentenced, perfectly justly, to a term of life 
imprisonment. And then came a tug-of-war. 

“ Behold me in my cell, waiting, for the 
Governor. And my expectations were not 
disappointed ; the only difference was that I 
was taken before the Governor — I was asked 
to visit him instead of him visiting me. 

‘‘ ‘ Now Apache Kid,’ said he, ‘ I suppose 
you have secreted the money ? ’ 

“ ‘ No doubt about it,’ said I. 

“ ‘ Was there anything else beside money ? ’ 
said he. 

“ I looked at my two gaolers on either side. 

“ ‘ Governor,’ said I, ‘ I have something to say 
to you. It is going to be a pretty big deal, and 
it is going to come off ; and after it comes off 
you won’t want any one to know anything about 
it. Tell these two men to step outside and I’D 
show you my first card.’ 

“ He looked at me thoughtfully, and then he 
nodded to them, and they slipped out. 

“ ‘ Yes ? ’ said he when they had closed the 
door. 

“ ‘ May I have a chair ? ’ I said. 

“ He signed to a chair and I sat down. 

“ ‘ You want to ask me about some Gk)vern- 
ment papers, do you ? ’ said I. 

“ I exppcted he’d arranged some plan of 
campaign for himself, had it all cut and dry ; 
but he was not dealing with some ex-hobo who’d 


AT THE HOLLOW TREE 113 

graduated through the various classes from 
intimidating lone ladies, through shop -lifting 
and watch-snatching, to holding up a gun at 
some man, and the first thing he knew being 
landed on his back before his bousy finger could 
press the trigger.” 

Apache stopped. 

“ You’ll pardon the egotism,” he said, “ but 
I was doing a pretty big deal — ^Apache Kid 
versus the United States of America, so it 
wasn’t likely I was going to stand talking to its 
first representative.” He gave a snort. “Don’t 
you mistake me either,” he said. “ I don’t mean 
that I was at all liable to end standing up and 
answering the President. I fully expected to 
have to face half the railway magnates and 
half the senators in these states before I got 
through ; and I was determined, as each man 
went down, and his boss came up, to sit easy 
in my chair. I could see myself, at the end, 
in the White House with my feet on the stove. 
That’s the only way to go in for a big deal. 
That was how I felt anyhow. In the language 
of the country 1 felt good,” he snapped. 

“ I had my plan of campaign,” he went on, 
shaking the rein and clicking to the pony, “ I was 
going to put all my cards down to each one in 
succession, and I knew from the word ‘ go ’ what 
I was going to ask. I got it ! No, sir, I didn’t. 
I had to let one of my chances go.” 

He reined in his horse, shook his fist in the air, 
cursed for five minutes. 

“ Just a little more sand and I might have 

H 


114 HANDS UP ! 

got it,” said he. “ Well — I’ll tell you. I said 
to that Governor : 

“ ‘ You want some bonds. I can get them for 
you, and in return I want a full pardon, signed, 
sealed, in my breast pocket, and a full pardon for 
Johnson, signed, sealed and in his breast pocket.’ 

“ I sat back. 

“ ‘ That’s all,’ I said. 

“ And then we sat and looked at each other ; 
we sat such a heck of a long time that the two 
gaolers came in before they were rung for. 
The Governor looked at me again, and after 
having glanced up at them, sat and looked at 
me again for another heck of a long time and 
then he said : 

“ ‘ All right, take him down.’ 

“ I was left alone the rest of that day. 

“ They came for me the next morning and 
walked me up, opened the door, ushered me in 
and stepped back, closed the door. There was 
a big -bellied man with gold armour across 
his paunch sitting beside the Governor. 1 knew 
then that I had won the first trick. I had 
half expected some return to medieval tortures, 
but no — ^this new man was a Congressman, and 
a Congressman with a very big interest in the 
C.S. & S.W. Railroad. 

“ ‘ Well, my man,’ said he. 

“ ‘ Pardon me,’ said I. ‘ I have not the 
pleasure of your acquaintance. Introduce us. 
Governor.’ 

“ ‘ You are the Apache Kid,’ said the Con- 
gressman. 


AT THE HOLLOW TREE 115 

“ ‘ You forget, sir,’ said I, ‘ that though my 
fame is scattered broadcast and my portrait, 
I have no doubt, decks the front page of all 
the best Sunday papers, politicians are not so 
popular as train robbers.’ ” 

Apache chuckled. 

“ That buck laughed. ‘ Sit down,’ he said, 
‘ I’m ,’ and he gave me his great name. 

“ ‘ Pleased to meet you,’ I said. 

“ I did not put my heels on the table. I 
fully expected to see a better than him yet. 

“ ‘ Now,’ said 1, ‘ there is a little bit of 
business we might discuss.’ 

“ ‘ About some bonds ? ’ said he. 

“ ‘ About some bonds,’ said I. ‘ Let me put 
the proposition before you. I want a pardon in 
my pocket, a pardon in friend Johnson’s pocket, 
and the bonds will be yours.’ 

“ He sat and looked at me. He sat and looked 
a heck of a long time, and then he turned and 
looked at the Governor and nodded his head. 
After all it does stand to reason that a man does 
not become a political big bug without having 
some kind of savvy when he has met a man who 
is liable to call the deal on him. He stood up 
and smiled at me. He stepped over and held 
out his hand. 

“ ‘ My boy,’ he said, ‘ I’ll do my best for you ; ’ 
and I was on my guard. If ever a man calls 
you ‘my boy,’ shakes hands with you, and 
puts his left hand on your shoulder while he’s 
shaking ; or if ever you’re having a discussion 
with a man and he says to you ‘ as between one 


116 


HANDS UP ! 

man and another ’ — keep your eyes skinned ; 
he’s got wax on his nails. 

“ The warders came in then and I hiked back 
to that cell. No hard labour yet, no talk about 
it. No cessation of grub, no beginning of 
starvation. Three days passed and then I 
am walked up again — Gk)vernor, Political Big 
Bug, and a man 1 couldn’t fail to recognise. 
Senator Davis, railroad magnate, steel king, 
wheat- cor nerer. I nodded to the Governor ; 
I nodded to the man who was going to do his 
best for me ; I stepped over to Senator Davis 
and I held out my hand. 

“ I said : ‘ Well, Senator, I do not think we 
need an introduction, so we may as well get to 
business.’ 

“ He looked just mad and amazed all in once. 

“ The Governor frowned. The man who 
wanted to be good to me giggled, a sick giggle, and 
wagged his head as if to say : ‘ I told you so' ! ’ 

“ Senator Davis pointed to a chair, and I sat 
down. 

“ ‘ Now,’ he said, ‘ I hear you’ve been giving 
final propositions. You’re the kind of man if 
you were selling a horse and wanted a hundred 
dollars for it you wouldn’t ask a hundred and 
fifty and let them beat you down,’ and he paused 
and waited for me to signify my assent. But I 
just sat in that chair listening ; so he went on.^ ^ 

“ ‘ You would ask a hundred dollars, and if 
they offered you seventy-five you would say 
to hell with them.’ 

“ I nearly shouted : ‘ That’s the kind of 


AT THE HOLLOW TREE 117 

man I am 1 ’ but I didn’t. I only said ; ‘ You’re 
on the way to an understanding of me.’ 

“ His little eyes just gave a little roll and 
looked at me ; the man who wanted to be good 
to me wasn’t looking at me at all — ^he was looking 
at the Senator ; the Governor had his head 
down and he was either looking at his chin or 
the second top button of his waistcoat. 

“ The Senator opened a paper with an 
official seal on the tail of it, and said he : 

“ ‘ Well, you can flatter yourself that I’ve 
come from Washington specially to see you. 
That’s pretty big, isn’t it ? ’ 

“ ‘It’s pretty good,’ I said. 

“ I could feel the others looking at me. There 
was a bit of a pause, and then the Senator said : 

“ ‘ Let me hear your offer again.’ 

“ ‘ Full pardon for Johnson,’ I said, and I saw 
him wilt ; ‘ a full pardon for me, and you have 
these bonds.’ 

“ He practically knew what I was going to 
say, but I had no sooner finished than he leaned 
forward and said : 

“ ‘ You’ll have the pardon, and the pardon will 
be sent to Johnson. Does Johnson know where 
the bonds are ? ” he asked easily. 

“ I looked in his eye for five minutes and then 
I looked at my finger-nails. 

“ ‘ Trumps,’ said I. ‘ Try again. Senator.’ 

“ The political bug No. 1 gulped a little ‘ By 
God ! ’ under his breath. 

“ ‘ You don’t think it’s a square deal ? ’ 
shouted the Senator. 


118 


HANDS UP ! 

“ ‘ It is — on my side,’ I said. 

“ ‘ Very well,’ said the Senator. ‘ I tell you 
what. Johnson will be brought here to-morrow. 
You will be brought here. You will have your 
pardons. A posse will accompany you wherever 
you wish.’ 

“ ‘ And then ? ’ says I. 

“ ‘ Then you and Johnson are free.’ 

“ ‘ How many are in this posse ? ’ I asked. 

“ ‘ Call it eight,’ said he. 

“ ‘ Four apiece,’ said I. 

“ The Senator leant across the table. 

“ ‘ Damn you,’ said he, ‘ it’s a wonder you 
didn’t say six to you and two to Johnson.’ 

“ I only looked at him — I was considering. 

“ ‘ We armed ? ’ I asked. 

“ He sat back again. 

“ ‘ No ! ’ he said. 

“ Then there was another long pause. I 
knew what it meant. I shook my head. He 
tapped on his table and said : 

“ ‘ Mr. Apache Kid, we were talking about 
horse selling. You are the kind of man that 
when you want a hundred dollars for a horse you 
say a hundred. I’m the kind of man that when 
I want a hundred I don’t say a hundred and 
fifty — I say a hundred and twenty-five ; and 
when the other man says “ I give you a hundred,” 
I change my mind. I say : “ Call it a hundred 
and fifteen.” Now that’s me.’ 

“ ‘ It’s a very common type,’ I said. 

“ He got right up then. He looked as if he 
wanted to yell at me. But he didn’t yell. 


119 


AT THE HOLLOW TREE 

He did what is worse. He put his forefinger on 
the table and pressed it down hard. 

“ ‘ Mr. Apache Kid,’ he said, ‘ I’m open to 
consider one alteration, and one only, and not for 
all the bonds of all the governments do I budge. 
When a man tries to make a deal too close there 
is always another way out.’ 

“ ‘ Yes,’ said I. ‘ When some dealer or an- 
other kept cornering wheat, the Government 
stepped in, if I remember rightly, and lowered 
the tax on wheat from the Argentine and 
Canada.’ 

“ I was having a dig at him. It was a mistake. 
He took it another way, 

“ ‘ Yes,’ he said, ‘ there are some individuals 
tougher even than Government.’ 

“ He opened his sealed parchment. 

“ ‘ I’ve been sent down to settle this,’ he said. 
‘ You don’t like the size of the posse — is that it ? ’ 
“ ‘ The size of the posse would be all right,’ I 
said, ‘ if I had a gun in my hand.’ 

“ ‘ Well,’ he said, ‘ that’s out of the question. 
Government wouldn’t stand for that, would it ? 
I tell you what. Two troopers, and to hell 
with Johnson. A pardon for you.’ 

“ I was going to shake my head when he said : 
‘ You called that horse down to a hundred. I’ve 
said a hundred and fifteen.’ 

“ ‘ What about if I happen to refuse — just 
theoretically,’ I said. 

“ ‘ If you happen to refuse,’ he said, ‘ I go back 
to Washington and report that you have des- 
troyed the bonds, that your brain is touched, 


120 HANDS UP ! 

and that you have some crazy idea, common to 
deranged minds, to create a sensation — and 
Apache Kid is forgotten, wiped out. Speaking 
theoretically, that is.’ 

“ There was another long pause. I could see 
myself going to the State Asylum instead of to 
the penitentiary. 

“ ‘ You never come down to the hundred 
on that horse, do you ? ’ I asked. 

“ ‘ I’ve come down now,’ he said. ‘ I’m at the 
hundred.’ 

“ I sat and felt cold. I remembered some little 
tricks that Johnson had played on me. 

“ ‘ All right,’ I said. ‘ Two troopers and a 
gun ’ 

“ ‘ No,’ he said, ‘ two troopers ! ’ 

“ ‘ Two troopers,’ said I, ‘ a full pardon, and 
then we walk down to the dep6t, board a train, 
and four days after you have the bonds.’ 

“ ‘ It will take that long ? ’ asked the Senator 
thoughtfully, and his little eyes jumped at 
me. 

“ I think he was beginning to think that after 
all he might have tried some other method, 
pumped me as to where the bonds were.” 

We were still at a stand-still, Apache yarning 
on, and I looked over my shoulder, suddenly 
wondering if the troopers might not be follow- 
ing us. 

“They won’t follow now. Besides, there’s 
a buzzard on that hill we’ve just come over ; 
they’d raise it coming up. Two days later I 
got the pardon. You saw the end of that 


AT THE HOLLOW TREE 121 

business. But I ought to have held out till 
I got my feet on the table and a pardon for 
Johnson too. And two troopers,” he said. 
“ Two troopers ! ” he yelled vigorously. “ By 
heck ! Now that I think of it I was a con- 
founded fool ; I should have killed these two 
men.” 

He wheeled his pony, which I recognised as 
the same white mount I had hired from the 
Colonel at Black Kettle, evidently hired for this 
trip too, wheeled madly, plunging the spurs in 
its flanks, and tightly grasping the gun appro- 
priated from the trooper, he sped away in the 
back track. 

Around I wheeled, determined to prevent this 
daring “ bad man ” who had saved my life six 
weeks ago (and won a pardon for himself with 
such tenacity that I could not but admire him) 
from committing a hot-blooded murder. He 
would be hunted to the death if he did that. 

The ragged-winged bird shot up from the 
crest behind us, where it had alighted, shot up 
as we dashed back, an ugly bird with a bald 
head. There was just it sweeping up into the 
sky, and Apache spurring down the slope on 
which we had halted, down it and up the other 
side of the dip at terrific speed, his horse going at 
a maddened gait, all a gathering together and 
swinging apart of nervous legs and flying of 
sand. 

And then over the crest — ^two men — against 
the sky line — ^topping the rise, sweeping down 
to meet him, then suddenly aware of him and 


122 HANDS UP ! 

wheeling. He rode back with such speed that he 
was nearly up their length already — and he 
saw their blue uniforms. They dismounted 
as quick as light, and both were down on a 
knee, and both fired. The darting light of the 
fires flashed, the reports burst. Apache fell 
from his horse and rolled wildly down hill into 
the scrub in the bottoms. 

I don’t know whether they thought he and I 
had parted company and that he had been coming 
back to trail them — as they had been, after all, 
following him. But in their excitement, in his 
dash up hill to them, in their exultation as he 
rolled bumping down that hill, and his horse 
ran round excited, plunging, they gave a 
simultaneous whoop. 

One leapt to his feet and, heedless of his horse, 
dashed down hill after the body. The other 
ran to his horse, it also plunging, caught the 
bridle, and swung to the saddle, then rode down 
hill. I was a pretty person to go after Apache, 
counselling not killing of these men in hot 
blood 1 And they were pretty specimens to 
take his in cold blood ! 

I gave a yell — ^thinking, of course, that they 
were after his pardon, intent on filching that 
from the corpse before they left it — gave a 
whoop of ‘ No, you don’t ! ’ and dug my heels 
into my pony’s flanks, and with a great snort 
he took the hill, nearly somersaulted, then 
stiffened his legs and away we slid down. 

Round whirled the first trooper — ^he who was 
on foot — and down he went on a knee to aim at 


AT THE HOLLOW TREE 123 

me, careful and steady — and “ puff ! ” came a 
whirl of smoke from the bushes in the bottoms, 
disconcerting my eye. The trooper lurched 
forward on his gun and, as he fell, it cracked 
aimlessly. 

The other trooper, the mounted one, was 
trying to take aim at me, but his pony danced 
at the sound of the firing. He threw off his horse 
to fire at me from the oft-side, clutching the bridle 
in an intention to wheel the horse between us ; 
but it wheeled too far and, brushing aside that 
gulping, nameless something in me that nearly 
made me yell, and gritting my teeth, I reined 
up abruptly, brought down my gun — ^and got him 
right. We fired almost simultaneously — and he 
fell. 

Then out of the scrub, where he had cun- 
ningly rolled for shelter, apt as an Indian in the 
strategy of such affairs, came the Apache Kid. 


CHAPTER IX 

ALIAS BILL 

A VERY sane and rational person would have 
let Apache Kid go, would have considered 
that he was too dangerous to make a friend. 
A measure-for-measure person might have 
argued : “ He saved my life the other day ; 
now I have saved his. Now let him go — he is 
not a ‘ safe ’ friend.” 

But what could I do with such a man ? 

He rose from the scrub, and the first thing 
he said after he had caught his horse was : 
“ Hi ! Hi ! My friend ! First thing before 
I thank you, I want to tell you right 

here that I killed both these sons of 

and you have to get that impressed on your 
mind.” 

I am no killer. That one shot in self-defence 
is as much as 1 wish ever to fire. It has satisfied 
me. I was bemused with the incident, now that 
the two men lay dead, and the sky and hills 
looked quietly on, and the two horses snuffed 
herbage on the slope. 

“ But I ” I began. 

“ Pshaw ! ” he said. “ Can’t you bluff your- 
self ? I can assure you that if I get up against 
it and am taxed with killing these men I shall 
say : ‘ Where are your witnesses ? ’ and if you 
chip in and say you finished one I shall chip in 
and say : ‘ Don’t you listen to him. He’s bug- 
house. I plugged them both.’ ” He swung to 

124 


ALIAS BILL 125 

his saddle. “Theoretically I did/’ he said and 
glared at me. 

Thus it was that I became one of Apache Kid’s 
friends, nay — an advocate, as you shall hear. 
I had been full of admiration for him for the way 
he had won his freedom, and now — ^well, he was 
white with me. 

“ You ride on your way, friend,” he said. 
“ You shake a hoof, pull out. Nobody knows 
you were in this except le Bon Dieu, and he’ll 
say nothing this side Time. You quit — now,” 
and he held out his hand. 

“ I would like to see you out of this,” I said. 
“ What are you going to do ? ” 

He considered the landscape, then stepped 
down from the saddle and moved to where one 
of the troopers lay, half way down-hill between 
the trail and the bottoms, levered him with his 
foot and sent him crashing into the bottom brush 
where the other had rolled already. Then he 
took one of the horses and led it down into deep 
scrub till the girths were touched, and shot it so 
that it fell crash, as when a beast is pole-axed. 
The other horse, at the shot, bolted, but only 
ran a few yards, for the reins trailed — and then 
it stood. Apache mounted again, the easier 
to catch it, and rode to it, caught the reins, and 
led it down likewise — and despatched it too. 
Then he rode up again. 

“ I feel doing that ” he cried in a hoarse 
voice. “ Well, so-long ! ” He held out his 
hand ; “ And thanks ! You’re a white man.” 

And then over the crest came a rider. 


126 HANDS UP 1 

I looked up and saw the foreman of the 
Diamond K. 

He rode down to us with loose rein, raised his 
head, looked astonished, and pulled up. He 
just gave half a nod to Apache Kid after the 
look of astonishment had passed, and turned 
to me. 

“ Say,” he said, “ you can ride back to the 
ranch and take your time.” 

He produced a note-book and pencil. 

“ What’s that for ? ” I asked. 

“ You ain’t ridin’ quick enough after Steve,” 
he said. “ That’s all.” 

‘‘ Sure that’s all ? ” I asked. 

“ It’s enough, ain’t it ? ” he said, and added : 
‘‘ Alias Bill.” 

“ Oh,” I said, “ that’s it, is it ? ” 

“ I ain’t arguin’,” he said. “ Here is your 
time check. If the boss asks what’s the trouble 
— you didn’t get a move on you quick enough, 
for my taste, after them boys that was going 
over, in response to the X Diamond X letter, to 
No. Three Creek. That’s good enough I guess. 
You tell him that.” 

I took the time check from him, tore it into 
little pieces and dropped it in the sand. 

“ I don’t want to touch the money of a ranch 
with a foreman like you,” said I. 

“ You be careful,” he said. 

As we spoke wc could hear a high bellowing 
voice, bellowing a ditty about cows and women, 
and it was a slightly coarse ditty, in a somewhat 
inebriated voice. And then, over the crest 


ALIAS BILL 127 

came the rider — saw us, yelled, swooped down 
waving his hand in air. The foreman hailed 
him as he came up, laughing at his condition, 

“ Been having a good time ? ” 

“ Yap — and goin’ home again to the outfit.” 

The foreman looked him up and down. 

“ I’m looking for a good roper,” he said. 

“ The hell you are,” murmured the drunken 
cowboy. “ Well — I guess you’ll find plenty of 
’em in this State,” waved his hand grandilo- 
quently to all of us, and jogged away. 

Apache urged his horse on at that. I followed. 
A little devil in me saw that it was an au- 
spicious time for leaving the foreman, just after 
having viewed this ignominious response to his 
offer of a job. I don’t say a little angel in me. 
I quite acknowledge it was a little devil. 

Apache looked over his shoulder. 

“ Why are you not straight ? ” he called 
to the foreman. “ Why don’t you ask a man 
to come and work for you instead of looking 
him up and down and telling him you’re 
wanting men ? I suppose you’ll go around now 
and tell people that you doubt if Yuma Bill is 
as good a roper as he’s cracked up to be ! And 
why didn’t you tell this gentleman what the 
real trouble was ? ” 

“It’s been my policy,” said the foreman, 
“ not to look for trouble. There’s enough trouble 
without looking for it.” 

“ Oh well,” said Apache Kid. “ There’s 
room for all kinds in the world. But it’s my 
opinion that your way of trying to dodge trouble 


128 


HANDS UP ! 

leads to more trouble in the end than if you were 
to be outspoken. Look at the case of me for 
instance. You haven’t asked what I’m doing 
here ? No — ^you ain’t looking for trouble. 
Good ! But first thing you do is to proclaim 
that you saw me here. You think I’ve broken 
gaol somehow, but you won’t say so. You 
ain’t looking for trouble. But first thing you’ll 
do is to find out about me and see if there’s a 
reward for information about my whereabouts.” 
He put his hand inside his jacket and produced 
a blue envelope. “ See — ^to save you trouble 
— ^read that,” and he held out a long parchment 
with a red seal at the end of it and the red 
letters “ This is to Certify ! ” at the top, and 
several “ Whereases ” down the side. 

“ I don’t want to see it,” said the foreman. 
“ I want nothing to do with your business, 
Apache Kid.” 

“ You’ve got to see this,” said Apache grimly, 
and rode back. 

Fully expecting more trouble I trailed after 
him and halted at his heels. The foreman 
looked stonily at the parchment. 

“ Well — is that enough ? ” he said. “ I ain’t 
interested.” 

“ Good ! ” said Apache Kid. “ And you keep 
not interested too.” 

“ Are you threatening ? ” said the foreman. 
“ You’ve had a heap of trouble already, you 
know.” 

“No — I’m advising. No, I’m not! I’m 
threatening. You keep not interested — ^that’s 


ALIAS BILL 12^ 

my advice to you,” and he half wheeled 
again. 

“ Well, I’m glad to hear this, Apache,” said 
the foreman, “I’m glad to know of this pardon.. 
Let me shake hands with you.” 

Apache looked at him. 

“No thank you,” he said. “If you had 
tried to hold me up right now, and then I had 
shown you the pardon, it would have been 
different. I would have shaken then, maybe. 
Mind ! I don’t say you’re wrong. 1 may be all 
wrong the way I see things ; but I don’t — 
frankly — I don’t have any use for a man like 
you.” 

The foreman looked almost like a corrected 
schoolboy. He seemed grieved, pained. I 
could see myself forgiving him if he looked like 
that ! 

“ Maybe I am too quick,” said the foreman to 
me, and I knew that he had seen that Apache 
was angered for my sake, furious at 
this “ firing ” of me. “ Say,” he said, “ can 
you explain how you happen to have two 
names ? ” 

He turned to Apache. 

“You must admit, Apache,” he said, “that 
it’s a suspicious circumstance to see this gent 
hob-nobbing with you here and to know he 
should have been down at Rattlesnake Crossing 
by now.” 

“ Two names ? ” said Apache Kid. “ You do 
know a lot. I don’t even know one of his names, 
and he laughed. 


I 


130 HANDS UP ! 

I sat there considering ; and then said I : 
“ It’s a long story — ^too long to tell now — and I 
assure you that it doesn’t signify anything very 
far wrong.” 

“ Ah — ^you’ll have to tell it,” said Apache, 
with the trace of a jeer in his voice. “ We can’t 
accept your assurances.” 

“ Well,” said I, and I laughed, “ it’s a long 
story ; and, seeing I’m leaving the Diamond 
K anyhow, I think it’s not worth while. 
I’ll take the horse back and leave it at the 
ranch.” 

“ Oh, say ! ” said the foreman. “ Better let 
me make you out a fresh time check. I’m sorry 
you quit like that.” 

“ Go on,” said Apache to me, “ you take the 
time check. They would wonder what had 
happened if you left so sick of the ranch that 
you wouldn’t have your wages and the foreman 
would have to explain. Help him out ! ” and 
his lip curled. 

“ You’re a bit hard on me, Apache Kid,” said 
the foreman, and wrote afresh in his pocket- 
book and tore out a page. 

“ Take it,” said Apache. “ It’s due to you, 
anyhow. You’re quitting the ranch now — 
you’re not getting fired for being in my company, 
or for having two names, or for taking too long 
to ride wherever you were riding.” 

The foreman abruptly shook his bridle and 
rode on. 

“ Well,” said I to Apache, “ what are you 
going to do ? ” 


ALIAS BILL 131 

“ I ? ” he said. “ I’m going to Black Kettle. 
It has just come into my head that this 
pony was hired. I’ve got to take him 
home.” 

“ So far as that goes,” said I, “ he’ll go home 
himself. He carried me up to the Diamond K 
and went back alone.” 

“It’s very kind of you to be so interested 
in keeping me out of Black Kettle,” said he, 
“ but after all, why shouldn’t I go back ? 
And besides, what should I do afoot in the 
hills ? What are you going to do ? ” 

“ Pull this forty dollars,” said I. 

“ And after that ? ” he asked. 

“ Oh, go back to Black Kettle,” said I. 

We had ridden back on the trail and come 
in sight of the high blazed fir. He held out his 
hand. 

“ Well — so-long ! ” he said. 

I took the hand and pressed it. 

“ Take care of yourself,” I said. 

“ I killed two — ^remember,” said he. 

“ Very well,” I said. “ Then I know nothing 
about it.” 

“ That’s right,” and we wheeled and parted. 

The owner of the Diamond K, Maxim, paid me 
in person. 

“ Going to quit ? ” he said a little astonished. 
“ You’ve hardly come yet.” 

I did not reply. 

“ Been fired ? ” he asked. 

“ I don’t know whether I’ve quit or been 
fired,” said I. 


132 


HANDS UP ! 

“ Oh ! ” he said, counting out the dollars. 
“ Had trouble with my foreman ? ’’ 

“ Either that, or the foreman had trouble with 
me — I don’t know which,” said I. 

“ I am sorry,” he said. 

He watched me unsaddling the horse and 
rolling my blanket. 

“ Take care of yourself on the way back,” he 
said. “ Some of those steers in the valley 
are liable to make hay of a man walking.” 
And then I set out, my face towards Black 
Kettle. 

But half way to the tree I saw a rider coming 
in my direction. It was Apache Kid. 

It just struck me you would have to 
walk,” said he, “so I came up to meet you. 
There are no' trees in this stretch with 
branches under thirty foot up, and I pictured 
you waltzing round a tree playing tag with a 
steer.” 

But the wildness of the steers was really the 
other way about ; those that we came on on 
our tramp to Black Kettle headed away from 
us, with tails in the air, the moment they 
sighted us. I half expected Apache to say 
something when we came to what had been 
known, prior to the hold-up, as “ Johnson’s 
Experimental Ranch,” and, after it, as “ The 
Hollow Fraud ” because of the newspaper 
headings, but I was not going to broach the 
subject. 

We passed in silence. A quarter of a mile 
past he wagged his head. 


ALIAS BILL 183 

Said he : “ You didn’t ask me anything about 
the ranch when we came past.” 

“ No,” I said. 

“ Interested ? ” he asked. “ Shake,” he said, 
and we shook solemnly. “ I like your reserve,” 
but he didn’t say anything about the ranch 
nevertheless. A little bunch of steers, breaking 
away before us, turned him on to the subject of 
cattle, and he asked me if I had ever worked 
on a ranch before, and hearing I had not, 
and what I had been doing at the Diamond 
K, told me how difficult I would have found 
it at first to have estimated the ages of the 
stock. 

“ These three that we raised,” he said, “ one 
was a two -year-old and the other two were 
three years. It’s like rolling off a log to tell 
them by the teeth. Milk teeth the first year, 
two big teeth the second, four the third, six the 
fourth, eight the fifth.” 

“ The trouble is,” said I, “ cows don’t always 
yawn at you or smile.” 

“ Oh well,” he said, “ you get on to the horns. 
Rattle joints in a rattlesnake’s tail, rings on a 
cow’s horns, crow’s feet round a man’s eyes ; 
with the knack of quick seeing you can tell 
them all.” 

Then abruptly he cried out : “ There — you 
can hit Black Kettle on your lonesome now,” 
dug in his heels, and went off in a whirl of 
dust. 

And when I crested the hill above Black Kettle 
I just saw the white spot of the horse, and the 


134 


HANDS UP ! 

black dot atop, drifting across the shining thread 
of the railway track and gliding across to the 
tiny store that showed all roof, with the merest 
speck of a black door peeping out from under 
the eaves. 


CHAPTER X 

APACHE TALKS 

Apache and I sat on the verandah of the 
splendidly-styled Palace Hotel of Black Kettle, 
in the evening. It was a clear night, almost 
cold already, as is the way in those parts after 
the hot day. The benches were bathed in 
starlight. As for the stars that put their 
glamour over the land — I am a little afraid to 
speak of them lest I be high-falutin. Only 
artists in words — and astronomers — can write 
about such nights and not be high-falutin. I 
remember recalling a phrase from Professor 
Lowell’s book which I had studied once for an 
examination, in which he comments that even 
in America, thanks to the smoke of industrial 
towns, one cannot see the stars, fairly, east of 
the Missouri. 

Apache nodded to the Great Dipper. 

“ I once spent a summer with the Blackfeet 
up near Browning, Montana. The end star of 
the handle of the dipper makes a circle round 
the North Star once in twenty-four hours. The 
sky is their dial and the star its hour hand. 
It’s a heck of a great clock,” said he medita-^ 
tively, and not at all flippantly despite the way 
of expressing himself. 

I sat and looked on the “ heck of a great 
clock,” the clock of eternity. I have said that 
I shy at talking about stars lest I be high- 
falutin. I shy at loving them too well too. 

135 


136 


HANDS UP I 

For I have found that as soon as I seem t > gain 
a period in my life when I may be at peace, 
something comes along and boosts me into 
torture. Fate puts a charge as of dynamite 
into my quiet. If I sit down to bask in grass 
there comes a rattlesnake. If I sit, like Omar, 
considering the stars ; or remember how, for 
Emerson, coming out of a political meeting, the 
stars looked down and said : “ Well ? Why 
so hot, little sir ? ” — if I come to a period in my 
life when I can sit by a creek-side and allow 
myself to be bewitched by whorls of water, 
there is always Fate stealing behind and saying : 
“ Hands up 1 ” and as I do not throw up my 
jhands tamely there is more “ scrap.” Like 
;many another cow-puncher I consider myself 
at times a philosopher or poet gone wrong I 
And yet, perhaps, these moods that come at times 
.are ridiculous. I might have failed as a poet. 
And I see from the papers that when a man 
fails as a poet he generally becomes a critic* and 
explains to poets how to read their verses. 
Better riding the range — despite the parts of the 
life that I never care for much, which the cow- 
puncher of to-day has to attend to and the cow- 
puncher of yesterday never dreamt of doing. 

I may be laughed at for saying that I am a 
man, by my instincts, of peace ; may be 
laughed at, seeing that my story is so much 
about eruptions ; but I save out of my life of 
much tempest, such times as this : sitting at 
peace on the verandah of the Black Kettle 
Hotel, thirty-five dollars and two bits (or a 


APACHE TALKS 137 

quarter) in my pocket, a prime supper digesting 
under my belt, a pipe in my teeth, and the stars 
so bright as to make particles of sand before the 
hotel glitter as if there were frost in them, and 
the shadows of the hitching -poles show blue, or 
indigo, in the sand, 

“ I think those troopers acted on their own 
initiative,” said Apache breaking the silence. 

“ Oh,” said I. “ You don’t think they had 
orders ? ” 

“ No, I don’t. If I had worked a pardon 
north of the line and been sent off with two 
N.-W.M.P. men they would never have played 
such a trick. They would have known that it 
wouldn’t have helped them one little bit. 
They might have found themselves in Stoney 
Mountain for life if they had gone back with 
news that they had killed me. So, even 
granted a member of that force dirty enough to 
try it — ^which I doubt, for it’s a small, picked 
force, and they are absolutely bug -house about 
being the whitest force of police in the world — 
even granted one member fit to try such a trick, 
he would have known it was useless for pro- 
motion. All the same I don’t mean that the 
U.S.A. go in for that sort of thing. Only I do 
mean this — ^that if these two men had killed me 
and gone back with a yarn of me trying to play 
some game on them they would have had no 
censure and very probably they would have had 
promotion according to the story they doubtless 
meant to put up — I tried to plug them. The 
American army is all right. It holds some good 


138 HANDS UP ! 

soldiers, plenty of them — but America is too 
full of the graft spirit.” 

The drollery of a train robber sitting in judg- 
ment on the United States, to praise or to 
censure, never struck me. I listened to Apache 
with the greatest interest, simply listening as it 
were to the expression of an individual’s views. 

“I’ve always suspected that Sitting Bull 
business,” said he. “ I was over at Rosebud, 
S.D., when it happened. The agency police 
went to arrest him. Now he was a damned 
nuisance was old Sitting Bull. There was no 
doubt that Uncle Sam would be glad to be shut 
of him. The agency police went to arrest him. 
Did he evade arrest and let them plug him ? 
No. He got on his horse ; but — hearken ! 
After he started there was sign of a rescue being 
attempted — so ‘ Biff ! ’ and Sitting Bull is dead. 
These kind of things happen a great deal — and 
then there’s an inquiry when the people shout for 
it loud enough. But the dear people, having 
instigated an inquiry, are content. They guess 
that the inquiry is going ahead with its in- 
quiring. So doubtless it is — ^and it will, in the 
end, put in some kind of report which will 
appear in print when nobody is interested. But 
that’s not the United States, my friend — ^that’s 
life. That’s humanity. Doesn’t an individual 
behave just that way with himself ? Isn’t that 
just the way ninety-nine men out of a hundred 
go on dickering with evil week-days and salving 
it all on Sunday — playing knucklebones with 
brain, heart, conscience, and what are called 


APACHE TALKS 139 

primitive instincts ? And ninety-nine men out 
of a hundred don’t know that they’re playing 
bluff with themselves. An honest man is up 
against it, and the one that comes through to the 
end is a white man to love, by heck ! Most men 
go down — and the most of them go down 
bluffing. Life’s all a bluffing and a robbing and 
a being robbed. You can choose to be a robber 
or a robbed from. It’s all part of the scheme. 
Even Judas is in it, you’ll observe.” 

He turned and looked at me, and his eyes had 
quite a mad glitter, showing like a cat’s in the 
star-glow. 

“ Quite so,” he continued, “ I’m bug-house ! 
Bug-house ! Crazy ! But anyhow — ^when it 
comes to stringing me up I’m not the kind to 
say ; ‘ Kind friend, be lenient, remember me 
with a good word. Alias Bill. I may have stolen 
a bunch of horses, or held up a bank, but I once 
saved your life.’ Confound that ! That’s 
sheer dime novel.” 

“ I wish,” said I, “ you would not talk about 
getting strung up.” 

“ Hang it all, man ! ” he cried. “ Can’t 
you understand me ? I’ve taken a fancy to you. 
I thought you could understand me. I’m a 
man who simply didn’t ever have a chance. I 
was the robbed, all the way along, from a kid up ; 
and when I sat down one day and sized it up I 
simply quit. Apache Kid was born out of what 
had gone before, and the other man died — he 
was quite worn out, I assure you.” 

He was silent so long that I began what he had 


140 


HANDS UP ! 

somehow reminded me of, to tell him about my 
own life in Scotland, and of the reason for my 
coming away. 

“You heard the foreman of the Diamond K 
call me Alias Bill — so now you’ll understand,” I 
said, and told him of the name Williams, how I 
took the first name that came into my head. 

“ I know,” he said. 

I finished my story, telling it to him just as 
you know it, and he said : 

“ There you are ! What kind of show did you 
have ? Of course you might have stayed at 
home. It must gall you — ^that lurcher not being 
dead ! ” He stopped and snorted. “ Oh, but 
you’re sane ! ” he cried with a chuckle. “ You’re 
sane ! ” 

He too was sane next minute. 

“ I’m going out of all this starlight,” he said. 

That kind of glimmer makes me talk wild. 
Anyhow — I’ve got friends in Black Kettle.” 

When the cold drove me in later I found 
Apache Kid telling, to the proprietor and two 
cow-punchers, the story of how he got his 
pardon. 

One of the boys laughed and said : 

“ You’re open enough about it, anyhow.” 

“ Well,” said Apache Kid, and returned a 
roguish smile, “I’ve been tried and found guilty 
and pardoned, haven’t I ? ” 

He merely pulled out the pardon and thrust it 
in again and of course they did not ask to see 
it. If he wanted to show it — ^good. If he wanted 
only to wave it and pocket it again — ^good. 


APACHE TALKS 141 

I don’t for a monient think that either of the 
cow-punchers had the slightest intention to 
emulate Apache Kid ; but they relished his talk. 
I suppose they picked out what was fine and 
daring and manly, and kept a mental reservation 
for themselves, had a little headshake by them- 
selves, afterwards. A man like Apache Kid 
found the hearts of these men much as a Dead- 
wood Dick novel finds the heart of a healthy boy. 
Only the unhealthy will go and try to be Dead- 
wood Dick too — ^and fail. 

A voice came from a corner and I turned to 
find that the old store-keeper was sitting at a 
side -table, over a glass. 

“ You know what it is, Apache Kid. If you 
do it again — mark you, I don’t say you’ve done 
it before — if you do it again and keep on doing 
it you’re going to stop a heap of lead one day.” 

The two young men looked round at the 
voice, looked very feelingly back at Apache Kid 
and then said, in duet : “ That’s what I ” 

“ And you can’t blame ’em, Apache, for all 
your clever talk. You’re the smartest bad man 
I ever see — and I came into this country in ’49, 
mark ye ! You’re the prettiest bad man I ever 
see, and when an old man like me says he 
wouldn’t mind having a boy like you it means 
a heap.” 

Apache’s mouth dropped, and I saw his eyes 
suddenly fill and the two cow-punchers said : 
“ That’s what 1 ” in quiet voices. 

“ But mark you, Apache Kid, hoomanity is 
so built that if road-agents wasn’t stopped with 


142 HANDS UP ! 

lead they’d be nothing but road-agents. It’s 
something like this yere Socialistic talk about 
state support for this kind of man, and for that 
kind of man, and the next kind. A little bit of 
stretching and who, I ask, is going to pay in to 
the state bank to support them that’s drawing 
out of it ? There’s going to be a kick coming.” 

I don’t know if the Colonel’s logic was sound 
in expression, but I think it was good inside his 
old head. 

He rose and retired. 

“ The Colonel,” said the hotel proprietor, 
“ is bug-house about these political ideas. He’s 
been reading a bunch of English papers that 
Scotty brought over to him from the dep6t, and 
he rings state support into every subject he talks 
about — ^but ” 

“ He’s all right in the main,” I said. 

“ That’s what ! ” said the cow-punchers, 
looking still sadly upon the swaggering Apache. 

“ Come now,” said Apache, laughing, “you’re 
all ag’in’ me.” 

None of us had noted that the Colonel had 
paused in the doorway, before leaving, and had 
heard all this. He shuffled his feet. 

“ No, we ain’t,” he said. “ We’re all for you, 
sir. There’s just one kink in your head, like a 
thorn under the saddle, and if you could only 
pull that out there would be peace.” 

I wondered if he meant for the rider or the 
horse. Doubtless so did Apache ; but it would 
have been unfair to have pressed the Colonel’s 
metaphors too far, as a dialectician does when 


APACHE TALKS 143 

his opponent’s views are sound but the metaphors 
faulty. Even the warped (if he was warped) 
Apache Kid knew that the old man spoke wisely 
and from his heart, and from a big experience. 

“ Thank you, Colonel,” he said. 

“ I’m afraid that’s all that will ever be to it,” 
said the Colonel. “ I had a young kid come in 
one morning and asks for a job. 1 gave him it 
too, round about the store. He owned up that 
he had been hoboing and beating the country on 
the cyars — ^but he wanted to settle down and 
work for a living. All right — I gave him a 
chance. Then one day I sees him run like hell 
over to the depot when a train comes in. He 
rubber-necks at the train and comes back. 

‘ What you rubber-necking at the train for ? ’ 
says I. ‘ Mother come West for her lost boy ? ’ 
He laughs, and says he : ‘It was a new kind of 
cyar they had on and I was looking to see what 
kind of perch the rods underneath would make.’ 
— ‘ Perch ! ’ says I. ‘ I thought you had quit 
hoboing and beating your way.’ — ‘ I’d like to 
try that new cyar, uncle,’ he says. He called 
me uncle. A week later he disappears. Where 
had he gone ? Then I took a tumble and over 
I goes and asks Scotty : ‘ Say, was there a 
curious new cyar went through to-day ? ’ — 
‘ Sure,’ he says, ‘ there was.’ That’s all.” 

We laughed, and the Colonel shuffled off. 


CHAPTER XI 

BUCK JOHNSON 

Doubtless you know that whimsical feeling, 
if not of proprietorship in a place, of belonging 
to it. On this return to Black Kettle, when I 
came down to breakfast in the morning, I found 
myself wearing quite the air of an old inhabitant 
— of being a citizen of Black Kettle. The rail- 
way meant less to me. I had seen a little way 
into the country beyond — ^and I was known. 
True, of cattle I knew just about as much as 
Apache Kid had told me as we returned. The 
cowboy’s life had been for me, so far, grooming 
horses, splitting wood, mucking stables and 
mixing flour. I could at least say : “ I have 
worked with the Diamond K outfit,” if I could 
not say : “ I’ve been riding the range for the 
Diamond K outfit ” ; and here I was in from the 
ranch, back in Black Kettle. 

The charm of new countries, for the pilgrim, 
is that he feels himself very much play- 
ing a part in them. It is all so new to him 
that, looking round on all things, he stands 
outside himself and sees himself too, in the 
new setting. 

Biting a toothpick, in the fashion of Black 
Kettle, I sat in the hotel sitting-room, content, 
with the dollars from the Diamond K hardly 
touched. I was so much an “ old resident ” 
that when the “ westbound ” came in I did not 
trouble to go and look out. I was in the position 
144 


BUCK JOHNSON 145 

to size up, quietly, any one that might drop 
off the train. 

I wandered, instead, over to the Colonel’s 
store and strayed round there, considering 
various interesting objects : saddles with silver- 
mounted pommels ; saddle ropes ; saddle 
blankets ; chaps, of leather plain ; of leather 
fringed ; of sheepskin with the hair outside. 
The Colonel paid no heed. He never stepped 
forward and rubbed his hands and said : “ What 
can I do for you ? ” He had the air of taking 
it for granted that one always came into his 
store simply to look round and blow smoke up 
into the low rafters. 

I considered that when I got my next job I 
would buy a pair of chaps. As it was I had had 
to stitch, laboriously, a seat of leather into my 
ordinary pants. 

The Colonel, using his pursed lips for a pen- 
rack, was fussing deliberately with accounts. 

I saw a curiously patterned blanket among a 
heap at the end of the counter. 

“ What kind of blanket is this ? ” I 
asked. 

The Colonel looked up, looked at the blanket 
over his uneven spectacles, which he always 
put on (to look at a paper or an account) with an 
air of being unfamiliar with them. 

“ Navajo blanket,” he said ; “a twenty- 
dollar one.” 

“ Oh ! A Navajo blanket ! I’ve heard of 
them,” I said. “ Is this then a genuine Indian- 
woven one ? ” 


K 


146 


HANDS UP I 

He looked blankly at me. 

“ A twenty-dollar one,” he repeated, more 
deeply. 

The Colonel was going to rob me of that 
sense of being an old inhabitant. I could feel 
that. Evidently the fact of saying it was a 
twenty-dollar one was tantamount to saying it 
was not an original Navajo. There is one trait 
in my character that I never condone. It is, to 
me, quite disgusting. I kick myself badly for 
possessing it, and one of these days I’m going to 
cut it out, destroy it. This trait : it is a way of 
trying to look as if I know things that I don’t 
know. It has made me not know things some- 
times ; for a man has begun about something 
and said : “ You know ? ” and I have nodded 
my fool’s head and said : “ Oh yes,” — and he 
has simply said no more at all, instead of going 
on and letting me gather the facts of which I was 
ignorant. Many people are like that. 

“ Oh ! Twenty dollars you said,” said I, as 
if I had thought he had said “ ninety.” That 
is the strategic way of one with that absurd trait 
in his nature — such as I have. 

He looked at me again blankly. 

“ Yes, that’s what I said,” said he. 

These quiet old men do make a greenhorn, 
when he is just beginning to play-act to himself 
that he is in the swim, feel he is a greenhorn 
indeed — and so I retired. But I was to astonish 
the Colonel later, that very evening, and show 
him that, after all, it does not follow that 
because a man is not posted on Navajo blankets 


BUCK JOHNSON 147 

he does not know a ColV from a Derringer, a 44 
Winchester from a Sharpes. 

I walked back to the hotel. The train had 
evidently dropped some human freight. There 
was a stranger (to me at least) on the verandah. 
That was enough to make me think of Apache 
Kid. 

“ What does Apache keep staying around 
for ? ” I thought, for I had seen him, after 
breakfast, showing no sign of departing. “ Sooner 
or later those two troopers are going to be hunted 
for — when they don’t return.” 

I considered, however, that the newcomer 
might be the original founder of the place, who 
was just looking in again on it, and not a first, 
solitary sleuth, come gently and blandly to 
Black Kettle to make inquiries about the 
troopers. I did not, at any rate, advance on 
him and welcome him to Black Kettle and invite 
him to a drink as Black Kettle was lonely to a 
stranger. The Navajo blanket incident had 
stuck in my mind. I left such hospitality to 
others. 

I went into the bar-room and sat down to 
wait for dinner, hungry already ! I sat medi- 
tatively and stared at the blank face of the 
nickel-in-the-slot hurdy-gurdy. And presently 
Apache Kid came in from the sitting-room and 
sat down beside me. 

The man outside had looked in once or twice 
already, while I sat there alone, and now he 
looked in again, rose, entered and walked over 
to us. 


148 


HANDS UP 1 

How do you do, Apache ? ” he said. 

‘‘ How do,” said Apache. “ What are you 
drinking ? ” 

“ I don’t know that I am drinking,” said the 
man. 

“ Sit down then,” said Apache, “ and get your 
trouble off your chest. I’ve been expecting you.” 

I looked from one to the other. There was a 
grimness in the air. 

“ Expecting me ? ” 

‘‘ Sure,” said Apache. 

“ Friend of yours ? ” asked the man, in- 
dicating me, and sitting down heavily ; he was a 
heavy man, heavy-handed, heavy-browed ; 
heavy cheek-boned ; heavy-mouthed with a 
moustache like walrus tusks. 

“ Yes,” said Apache. “ Let me introduce you 
— Buck Johnson — ^Alias Bill.” 

“ How do. Alias, pleased to meet you.” 

“ How do, Mr. Johnson ? ” said 1. 

“ Er — could I have a word with you, Apache?” 
said Buck Johnson and pulled his long mous- 
taches. 

“ Right here,” said Apache. “ 1 have no 
secrets from my friend. Alias Bill.” 

“ Oh 1 ” said Johnson, and raised and lowered 
his brows, and nodded, and darted a quick, 
slanting glance at me again. Apache, I hasten to 
say, did not mean to drag me into his troubles. 
This was just his easy, insouciant, cheeky way. 

“ Well — 1 guess everybody knows,” said Buck 
Johnson ; “ the papers don’t say — ^but every- 
body knows.” 


BUCK JOHNSON 149 

** Knows what ? ” thought 1. He shot a 
glance at me again and I looked at the table. 

And I came along over to see you,” he went 
on to Apache. “ I want to know why my 
brother ain’t setting here in Black Kettle along 
of you.” 

** Yes,” said Apache, it’s quite an under- 
standable question. From anybody but Jake 
Johnson’s brother it would be a question too 
much ; but from Jake Johnson’s brother it 
shows a fine brotherly spirit — and a genuine 
spirit of that kind is a thing I admire.” 

“ There ain’t no need to butter me about it. 
But I’m glad you take it that way ; for I bin 
feelin’ mighty bad about it ; and I feels — ” he 
paused and he looked heavy indeed ; ‘‘I bin 
feelin’ I want an explanation, bin feelin’ as 
between brother and brother, and man and man, 
an explanation’s reasonably expected.” 

“ Sure I ” said Apache, but at the phrase 
“ between man and man ” our eyes met. 

“ Well sir,” he said to Johnson. “ I fought 
the Governor first — and then I fought Judge 
Radford, and then I rode no less a man than 
Senator Davis. I rode him as you might say 
on a hackamore. If he’d been bitted I’d have 
got your brother out too.” 

“ Well, why in thunder didn’t you, Apache 
Kid ? You was both in the trouble. Couldn’t 
you both pull out on the same deal ? ” 

“ I tried it,” said Apache. “ It was my 
fault. I set out determined to do it ; and we 
played a few games — Government and I. The 


150 HANDS UP ! 

Governor set in first and I just looked at his 
hand — and he quit. Then Judge Radford sat 
in to the table, and he dropped out. Then 
came Senator Davis.” 

“ Yes, I know. He is the railway.” 

“ He is the railway pretty nearly, as you 
say ; and he’s the roof of the White House too, 
you might add.” 

“ Yes ? I ain’t disputing it must have been 
an all-fired tough game.” 

“ It was. I’ve kicked myself a bit. I set out 
to win ; but I didn’t know the game was to be 
so tight. I knew it was going to be tight — but 
I didn’t know just how tight. In the last deal 
I had a good hand too. I had three queens and 
I reckoned that was enough ; but the Senator 
had four aces.” 

“ I know — ^the table was strange to you, and 
the cards was a new pack in your hands, and you 
hadn’t ever played a Senator before — but I see 
three queens was somehow strong enough to get 
you ofi against his four aces. Why in heck 
didn’t it get off Jake too ? ” 

He paused, and then with the air of an in- 
quisitor he said : “ He wasn’t in the pot, 
Apache, he wasn’t in the pot. That’s what 
it is.” 

“ He was in the pot all right,” said Apache. 

“ Well, he didn’t come out,” said Buck 
Johnson. 

“ No — and this is why ; now I talk quite 
straight to you. Another man might consider 
that we each should have put up our own game. 


BUCK JOHNSON 151 

We didn’t. Jake had not the savvy to put up. 
such a game. So I did. And, as I say — ^wait a 
minute — ” for Buck Johnson was about to 
interrupt — ‘‘I put it up for both — ^and I won 
every deal but the last ; but it’s the last that 
counts when you’re playing all your belongings, 
down to your saddle. I was right up to the 
place where we were both to get a pardon, and 
then come out and take some men to where 
the bonds were, and say : ‘ There ye are, boys, 
and good-bye.’ I was right up to there. 
But what was the posse to be ? ” He paused 
for Johnson to see the position, to let it soak in. 

“ I said two troopers — he said eight. I con- 
sidered and said : ‘ Make it eight men picked 
by me, just ordinary citizens that will see the 
thing through.’ — ‘ No,’ he said. ‘ Eight troopers 
or nothing.’ ” 

“ Pshaw ! ” said Johnson. “ I wonder you 
didn’t think of that before you sat in to the 
game.” 

“ I’d point out,” said Apache, ‘‘ with all 
respect for your brotherly love,” and he smiled, 
“ for all your solicitous interest in Jake, that he 
didn’t even think out a game at all.” 

“ Um ! Still you was both in for the thing, 
and you should both ha’ come out.” 

“ Well — I’m not very patient, and I’m 
explaining to you — ^because I appreciate the 
brotherly spirit.” 

Buck Johnson was bulging his lips. 

“ And the last deal ? ” he asked. 

“ That was the last deal. It was just this — 


152 HANDS UP 1 

‘Take it, or leave it. We don’t play again — 
we’ve played the last game, and you and 
Johnson leave here with eight troopers — that’s 
your guard. The Government is very easy about 
this — ^but the Government can’t run the chance 
of the scandal of two armed train robbers 
moving about like that. If you don’t like it so 
I tell you what I’ll do. I’ll make it two troopers, 
and you alone.’ — which would you have ac- 
cepted, Buck Johnson ? ” 

Apache put his hands on the table and glared 
at Johnson. 

“ You 1 You’d never have tried to get your 
brother off,” he said. 

Down went Johnson’s arm — and Apache’s 
darted across the table and he caught Johnson’s 
wrist. 

“I’m not armed now. Buck Johnson,” he 
said, clutching the wrist ; “ and Black Kettle 
is pretty free, but if you pull on me when I have 
no gun — ! Besides — Buck Johnson — ” they 
were wrestling across the table, Apache still 
gripping Buck’s wrist, “ — ^besides. Buck Johnson, 
if I was out of it where would you get any one to 
tell you where the dough was hid ? You’re not 
the man — ” Johnson ceased to struggle — 
“ you’re not the man to force me to show you 
the dough — not to force me — as I forced the 
Government to show me a pardon. And what 
you really want is a share of that wad.” 

He sat back. The bar -tender leant on the 
counter, staring, watching intently. 

“ Now you’re talking,” said Buck Johnson. 


BUCK JOHNSON 153 

“ Of course the other way is for me to keep 
Jake’s share till he gets out,” said Apache. 

Buck gave an ugly laugh. 

“ He’d be an old man then,” he said. 

“ And ready to retire,” said Apache, and 
laughed back at Buck. “ Now, Mr. Johnson. 
I’ve explained all that I think you are entitled 
to know, and ” 

“ Dinner’s ready, gents. Come in and eat,” 
came the proprietor’s voice. 

Dinner was eaten in silence and after it was 
through Apache rose. 

“ Going up for a lazy siesta,” he said. “ I 
feel tired.” 

Johnson sat glaring after him ; then, ignoring 
me, he rose and marched into the bar-room and 
called for a drink. 

I sat there considering that I liked Johnson 
not at all. If his brother, Jake Johnson, were 
anything like him he would be much more what 
I thought the "epical hold-up man than was 
Apache Kid. Not but what Apache Kid was a 
very unusual man — and with a streak of some- 
thing almost crazy at times in his composition. 

Ah Sing came in to clear away the last dishes, 
so I passed to the bar-room. 

I had another look at Johnson. He was 
drinking, and thinking, leaning heavily against 
the bar. He half turned and glanced at me. 

You know that feeling of being aware when a 
man is thinking of offering you a drink, weighing 
up the chances of being able to pump you ? I 
felt that then, and so I decided to move away 


154 HANDS UP ! 

and settle Johnson’s argument with himself as to 
whether I was open to be useful to him by absent- 
ing myself. I rose abruptly and marched off. 

Then it struck me that there was going to be 
bad trouble for Apache Kid. 

“ I’ll go up and advise him to go off to-day,” 
thought I. “ How long will they give these 
troopers ? How long will they defer a search 
for them ? It is at Black Kettle that inquiries 
will first be made. Apache will be found here, 
and arrested, to begin with — till they are heard 
of.” 

I went upstairs. I found Apache’s room and 
knocked. 

“ Come ! ” he called and I walked in and was 
confronted with a revolver ! 

He was lying down on the bed, fully dressed. 

“ Wasnt’t sure of the step,” he said, lowering 
the gun. “ Sit down. Cigarettes ? ” He tossed 
tobacco bag and papers to me. 

I sat down on the one chair and rolled a 
cigarette. 

“ Have you thought,” said I, “ that it is only 
a few hours’ journey from Fort Lincoln to here — 
and that, at any time, troopers may arrive ? ” 

He lay looking at me, an arm supporting his 
head as well as the pillow, which he had pulled 
from under the coverlet. 

I told them we would take nearly a week,” 
he said. “ There’s plenty of time. I was 
waiting to see how many spongers would want 
me. I have four days yet in Black Kettle to 
receive personal enemies.” 


BUCK JOHNSON 155 

“ Oh, yes — of course,” I said. I rose, blowing 
smoke. 

“ Look here,” he said, and he spoke very 
quietly. “ Remember — I killed them both. 
But, seeing you are so much interested in me 
taking care of my neck, you could do me a heck 
of a favour.” 

“ What is it ? ” I asked. 

‘‘ To take a packet for me up to Mrs. Johnson.” 

‘‘ Where ? ” 

“ At Johnson’s ranch.” 

“ Mrs. Johnson ! There’s no one there.” 

“ Yes there is. She is back there again now. 
She only left on the day of the hold-up because 
Johnson told her and she would have nothing to 
do with it. But she’s back now. You see, legally, 
she can sit in that ranch-shack for four months 
yet. The place was rented — ^for an experimental 
farm, money paid down too — ^for six months. 
She’s back there by now.” 

“ But she didn’t come by Black Kettle. How 
do you know ? ” 

“ Well, I’m willing to bet she is there any- 
how,” said Apache. “ She’ll be longing for 
some news. And she knows me a little bit. 
And she knows that I know no other place, bar 
one, where she might be. And as she has 
friends at the other place I expect she’s up at the 
ranch — so as to have both houses open to me in 
case I have anything to communicate.” 

I considered. 

“ And are others not likely to watch for you 
at these places ? ” I was really thinking of his 


156 HANDS UP ! 

safety — not of my own in the chance of me going 
up to the ranch as he wanted. His quick look 
made me add : “ Oh, of course, you can’t go up 
yourself.” 

“ Yes — ^but so long as I stay here Buck 
Johnson stays here too. You can take a horse 
and so for a little passear, and he will think 
nothing. I’m here — that’s all he’ll think of. 
He’s going to watch my movements.” 

“ I’ll go,” said I. 

“ Good ! ” said he. 

And I don’t think that it was just a memory 
of the help he had given me at the Dago gang 
that made me eager to help him. 


CHAPTER XII 
Jake’s wife 

Mrs. Johnson was a large, hard-looking woman, 
or perhaps I had bett er say strong -looking 
woman, with kind eyes. She must have been a 
very resolute woman to live alone here — ^that is, 
judging her from the standards of the Old 
Country. I had ceased to judge men from 
these standards, but she was the first woman 
round Black Kettle with whom I had come in 
contact, and I think m}^ first thought on coming 
in sight of the ranch — with the afternoon 
shadow of the great fir-tree opposite it running 
across the waggon-road, up the wall, and 
resting on the roof — and seeing her pass round 
the gable and then look up, hearing me, was that 
she was a very resolute woman indeed. 

Of course, it was hardly to be expected that 
Jake Johnson was the kind of man to marry a 
timid little mouse. When I saw that tall, 
square figure fold its arms and stand rigid at 
the gable -end I decided that I was to meet a 
virago. 

A dog plunged out of the ranch and came 
baying towards us and I heard the woman’s 
voice calling it back. It was a homely kind of 
voice and caused me to pull up and doff my hat 
in an open frame of mind. 

“ Good-day, ma’am,” I said, reining up. 

“ Good-day, stranger,” said she. 

“ Are you Mrs. Johnson ? ” I asked. 

157 


158 


HANDS UP ! 

“ That is my name, young man/’ said she. 

I passed the little packet to her and said I : 

“ The Apache Kid sent me to you with this.” 

Her face lit, and then she frowned. She held 
the parcel and looked at it, and turned it over, 
seemed undecided. Suddenly she looked up at 
me and said : 

“ Do you know the contents of this parcel, 
young man ? ” 

“ I do, ma’am,” said I. 

“ Friend of Apache’s ? ” she asked. 

“Well,” said I, “considering that Apache 
practically saved my life a week or two ago I do 
not suppose I am an enemy.” 

“ Very well put,” said she. “ I see you’re a 
white boy. You’d better tie your horse up and 
come in and drink tea before you go back. And 
say, young man, you can put your hat on again.” 

1 slipped off the white horse who lowered his 
head to exchange, I presume, some greeting of 
what we call the “ lower animals ” with the 
mongrel dog. They exchanged breaths, and I 
followed Mrs. Johnson into the shack. 

A black tea-pot stood on the stove, the verit- 
able black tea-pot that had invited Pete in here 
so short a time ago, and yet it seemed ages ago. 
So much had happened since he and I passed 
here ; it all flashed through me as I followed 
Mrs. Johnson — ^the swirling arrival of Apache 
and Jake Johnson, the recognition, the de- 
parture, the bucking wood and mixing flour and 
reading the garish accounts of the hold-up, the 
queer position of the “ John Williams or William 


JAKE’S WIFE 159 

Barclay ” incident, the pleasure of being ordered 
on “ the range,” the flutter of the incident of the 
hollow tree, the strained talk with the foreman 
of the Diamond K, the thoughtful mien of the 
Diamond K owner, the kind of flurry that had 
filled my heart during the last two or three 
hours, the sense of unreality, to one but recently 
come from class-rooms, and lectures, and police- 
men regulating traffic at the corners. 

A tap, tap, tap gave me a little jump and 
brought me back to Johnson’s ranch and the 
knowledge that a woodpecker was at work in 
some tree near by. 

“ So you’re the young man that worked with 
the Dago push on the railway,” said Mrs. 
Johnson. “ There’s some folk would think the 
less of you for that, but I ain’t one of them. 
A young man, green from the Old Country, who 
can hold down a job like that — he’s got the real 
thing in him. Have I to open this parcel ? ” 

“ Perhaps you’d better,” said I, “in case 
there might be an answer.” 

“ Just in a minute,” she said, took a dipper 
from a bucket, filled the kettle and put it on the 
stove. Then she undid the packet and out rolled 
wads of bills and gold coins all over the table. 

“ For the land’s sake 1 ” she cried, sat down 
on the stool and fell into thought. 

“ There’s a note in the bag,” I said. 

She fumbled and drew it out. 

“ Read it me,” she said, “ I ain’t got my 
glasses.” 

I unfolded the paper and read : “ Jake 


160 HANDS UP ! 

Johnson’s share,” and put the paper down on 
the table. 

Suddenly she got up. 

“ Well,” she said heavily, “ every nickel of 
that goes in the bank. I told Jake what — I told 
him that if he kept on at these kind of things I 
wouldn’t touch a nickel of it. There’s wives 
w'ould leave a man for the like of this. I told him 
that if he went through with that hold-up I 
would go down into Montezuma and start a 
laundry. I reckon Montezuma would rally to 
a white woman and let the chink go somewheres 
else. It’s real white, this of Apache — that’s 
the worst of it. A woman like me that’s seen a 
lot sees all that side of it too. I was a nurse in 
the Civil War, I was. Man is queer. When you 
come right up against that kind of thing, men 
screamin’ and swearin’ and dyin’, and men not 
lettin’ themselves scream and swear, and askin’ 
you to write letters to their folks and all that, 
it shows you right inside. I was never the same 
after the war. I got a different idea of men. I 
got to see men more like a man sees them — ^good 
and bad — don’t seem to matter much so long 
as a man is white. Apache Kid, he’s white, and 
my man, Jake Johnson, he’s white too. Do you 
like it strong or weak ? ” 

“ Not too strong.” 

“ Not too strong,” she said, "‘no. Well, Kid, 
you take an old woman’s advice — you keep on 
the rails. Here’s this Apache Kid now — I’ve 
bin swearin’ at him these last few days, and now 
he plays up white. Well, I take back all 


JAKE’S WIFE 161 

I bin saying. I was through the war, you see, 
and a woman who’s bin a nurse through the 
war, she gets a different view of things. If 
Apache’s white to my husband he’s white to me. 
Maybe I don’t like my husband’s ways, maybe 
I threaten to leave him, and I reckon I would 
have left him too — and you don’t find no other 
man come cavortin’ ’round me. That’s his 
affair and mine, and this here hold-up, that 
was Jake Johnson’s and Apache Kid’s.” 

She sat and looked at the money — at the heap 
of gold and paper. 

“ Where did you see them after the hold- 
up ? ” she asked. 

It suddenly dawned upon me that she did not 
understand. 

“ I’ve come from Apache just now,” I said. 

“ What do you mean ? ” she said. 

“ Apache’s out,” I said. 

“ Out ! ” she cried. “ Escaped ? ” 

“ No,” said I, “ he’s pardoned.” 

“ Pardoned ! And Jake ? ” She had poured 
out the tea. “ I got to sit down,” she said. 
“ You tell me about it,” she said. 

“ Well,” said I, “ there were some Government 
bonds in that train and after the hold-up they 
put them in a hollow tree. Now, Apache saw 
that he could not use these bonds as a lever 
before the trial, or at the trial ; the country 
would have to know all about the trial. He 
waited until they were sentenced and then he 
asked to see the Governor, and the Governor 
sent for him.” 


L 


162 


HANDS UP ! 

“ For the land’s sake I ” 

“ And then Apache said : ‘ Now you want 
these bonds ; I know where they are ; you will 
have them if you give me a full pardon.’ ” 

“ For himself ? ” broke in Mrs. Johnson. 

“ For both,” I said. 

She leapt up and cried out : “ Then Jake’s 
a-comin’ ? You’re a^breakin’ it to me ? This 
here’s a surprise party ? ” 

“ I would to God it was,” I said ; for the 
affection of this hard, kind woman, who had 
been through the war and had her out-look 
changed, who looked like a woman in her prime 
but who must have been on the threshold of age, 
touched me very deeply. “ If you will compose 
yourself,” I said, “ ” 

“ Compose myself ! ” she cried. “ And me 
through the war when you was in long clothes I 
The way you men do go on I Women that 
don’t know men all says that every man is a 
child to a woman. You tell me your story, young 
man.” 

The voice was very hard, and I said : 

“ Believe me, Apache Kid did his best to get 
Jake off — Mr. Johnson I mean.” 

“ Well,” said she, “ I ain’t decided yet that he 
didn’t. But you tell me and I’ll see what I 
think myself.” 

So I told her the whole story, she interjecting 
little exclamations as I told, now concentrating 
her brows, very thoughtful, anon nodding her 
head and keeping up the nod, nodding. After I 
finished she sat frowning. She was chewing the 


JAKE’S WIFE 163 

cud of the story. Then she rose, pushed the 
money altogether into one heap, 

‘‘Apache Kid did his best,” she said quietly, 
and then suddenly the dog gave voice outside. 
Mrs. Johnson started, 1 ran to the door and the 
first thing that struck me was that the white 
horse had gone. 

“ Where’s the horse ? ” I cried. 

“ There he is — in the bottoms,” said she, 
just as I caught sight of his white head raised 
among the long grass of the buttoms and his 
ears pricked to the sound of the dog’s voice. 

Mrs. Johnson thrust me suddenly back into 
the shack. 

“You go in there,” she said and pointed to 
the little rear room, curtained ofi by two hanging 
blankets. Scarcely had I entered and dropped 
the curtains behind me than I heard a subdued 
chink of gold. She had only time to push it to 
the back of the table beside the wall and throw 
her apron over it when a horseman pulled up 
at the door and the dog barked afresh, and a 
man’s voice hailed : “ You there, Mrs. John- 
son ? ” 

“ Come right in,” called Mrs. Johnson. “ I 
ain’t got no matches.” 

“ Good-evening ma’am, no more have I. 
Want a light for the lamp ? Allow me, ma’am,” 
and he opened the door of the stove. “ Got a 
piece of paper.” 

Peeping through, as it was safe to do, the 
shack being now so much in shadow, I saw her 
take up Apache’s note and twist it into a spill 


164 HANDS UP ! 

which she handed to the newcomer. He lit the 
lamp. I saw the glow striking up on his heavy 
face, the long moustaches making him look like 
a walrus. He turned up the wick as the mist 
cleared in the funnel. 

“ Just come up to see how you were getting 
on, Mrs, Johnson,” he said suavely. “ It’s the 
least a brother-in-law can do.” 

Mrs. Johnson snorted. 

“Well, it’s real good of you. Buck,” she said, 
“ but I don’t think I stand in need of any con- 
solation. You see, I bin through the war ; and 
a woman that’s bin through the war gets a 
different view of things and I ain’t askin’ for no 
sympathy.” 

“ That’s a good way to take it,” said Buck 
Johnson. 

“ It’s my way anyhow,” said Mrs. Johnson 
easily. 

He sat quiet for a long time. 

“ Ain’t you going to be sociable ? ” he said. 

I think she had sat down to some sewing, 
by the sound. Said she ; 

“ Did any one know you was coming up 
here ? ” 

“ Why sure,” he said. “ I says to the pro- 
prietor of the hotel : ‘Well,’ I says, ‘ I’m goin’ 
up to Mrs. Johnson. She’s liable to be wantin’ 
somebody up there, and train robbery or no 
train robbery,’ says 1, ‘ it’s the least a brother- 
in-law can do. I’ll go up,’ I says. ‘ She might 
want a man to stop with her over-night. It’s a 
kind of lonesome place.’ ” 


JAKE’S WIFE 165 

There was another long pause. I could hear 
the faint sound of Mrs. Johnson’s stitching. 
Also the dog gave a growl. 

“ You can go right back, Buck Johnson,” 
said she, “ and tell the pro-prietor of the hotel 
that Mrs. Johnson said : ‘ Thank you kindly 
for cornin’ up, but she’d rather be alone. It’s a 
gossipy country and there’s no Buck Johnsons 
coming around to take care of a lonesome 
woman ! ’ Do you hear me. Buck Johnson ? ” 

And then I heard a long, low whistle from 
Buck Johnson. 

“ Oh ! ” he said. “ He’s been and gone has 
he, then ? ” 

I heard his quick step across the floor and the 
sound of his hand crushing a bunch of bills. 
The dog, roving round the room, sniffed at the 
blanket curtains, wondering why I hid there. 

“ I’ll just take a handful of these, Mrs. John- 
son,” said Buck Johnson. 

I slipped my gun from the holster and stepped 
right out. 

“ Put up your hands. Buck Johnson I ” I 
called. I was absolutely alert, and calm, and 
saw my whole plan of campaign. 

“ If you move,” said I, “ I fire.” I stepped 
more close to him. “ I’m going to take your 
gun off you.” 

“ Don’t you 1 ” he said. 

“ Don’t you move,” I said quickly. I took 
his gun, I undid the buckle of his cartridge belt, 
and I put both on the table. 

“ Now, Mrs. Johnson,” said I, “Mr. Buck 


166 HANDS UP ! 

Johnson was so solicitous on your behalf that he 
left you his gun and his cartridge belt. Do you 
think you could get my horse, Mrs. Johnson ? ” 
I added. 

“ I guess 1 could,” she said, and passed out. 

“ All right,” said Buck Johnson to me, 
sourly, “ you have it on me this time.” 

“ I have,” said I. 

“ I’ll have it on you one day,” he said. 
“ And you won’t get off easy.” 

“ You’re tempting providence,” said I. 
“ Better not discuss this affair any more.” 

“ I’ve got him ! ” came Mrs. Johnson’s voice 
from outside. 

“Thank you,” I called, “we’re coming. 
Now then, Mr. Johnson, step out ! ” 

He marched to the door. 

“ Now,” said I, “ you’re going to mount, and 
you’re going to ride a length ahead of me ; and 
if you make it two lengths,” I went on de- 
terminedly, “ my gun goes full cock. And if 
you make it three ” said I. 

“ His name’s Dennis,” put in Mrs. Johnson, 
“ and I don’t blame ye. Don’t you trouble to 
raise your hat, sir ; and my compliments to the 
pro-prietor of the hotel.” 

And so we mounted and rode off from the 
“ Hollow Fraud.” 


CHAPTER XIII 

THE TWO TROOPERS 

The scene, when we came to Black Kettle, 
was laid in such a way as to appeal to Buck 
Johnson. 

The Eastbound was just drawing into the 
station, slowing up, the bell clanging. 

Johnson evidently decided that he would 
rather not have me tell the Apache Kid, while 
he was “ in town,” what had happened at Mrs. 
Johnson’s shack. When we gained the metals 
at the crossing he slipped from his horse, gave 
it a thump on the haunch, and ran helter- 
skelter to the platform, a black shadow in the 
blue night. 

Very well — if he wished to go he could. 
Knowing Apache Kid somewhat by now I 
decided that it was a good way out — otherwise 
Apache might get into more trouble ; for, if 
Apache heard from me of the affair at the 
ranch, there would be trouble between the two, 
— and Apache had probably found out by now 
that Johnson had not stayed on in the bar-room. 

I reined up and saw Johnson board the train 
and then I rode wildly on to the Colonel’s. 
The old man was at his stable door, opening it 
for the horse Johnson had ridden. 

“ Back again ? ” he said. 

“ Back again,” said I. 

“ You didn’t see the gent that had this horse, 
did you ? ” 


167 


168 


HANDS UP ! 

He was looking up at me keenly. I suppose 
it is what you would call chivalry that came up 
in me then. I remembered what Mrs. Johnson 
had said about gossip. I never thought that 
Buck Johnson had not told the hotel proprietor 
where he was going when he hired the horse to 
follow me, remembered only that he had said 
that he had done so. 

“ Colonel,” said I, “if you are interested, I 
can tell you a whole lot about the man that rode 
that horse.” 

He looked more sharply. 

“ You haven’t killed him, have you ? ” he 
asked. 

I thought again that he had wind of the story 
in some way — ^but I was wrong, as I found out 
later. 

“He’s just gone out on the Eastbound,” 
said I. 

“ Oh ! ” said the Colonel. “ You saw him ? ” 

“ I waited to see him board her.” 

“ You did ? ” thoughtfully. 

“ 1 did.” 

“ Did you see where he came from ? ” 

“ I did. He came from Jake Johnson’s ranch, 
in front of me all the way. And I want to tell 
you, the oldest inhabitant of Black Kettle — 
whose word goes here, as they say — that if you 
hear any story about Buck Johnson having gone 
up to the ranch and stayed there to protect 
Mrs. Johnson, it’s all lies. I suppose he told 
you that was what he was up to ? ” 

“ He told me nothing. He just hired a boss 


THE TWO TROOPERS 169 

for the arternoon and evening. You met him 
you say ? ” 

“ I had to carry a message to Mrs, Jake 
Johnson, I brought Mr. Buck Johnson back 
into Black Kettle in front of my gun and he 
elected to take the train. I didn’t stop him 
1 thought it better not.” 

“ Say,” said the Colonel, leading in the white 
pony, 1 having dismounted, “ Black Kettle 
seems to be getting to be a storm-centre. I 
think you know a heap ; but 1 think you’d 
better keep tight holt of it till you’re more 
posted up on what’s been happening in Black 
Kettle since you’ve been away these few hours.” 

“ What has happened ? ” I cried. It struck 
me that perhaps Apache and Johnson had 
fought, after all, when 1 went off. “ What 
has happened ? ” I cried. 

“ Two dead troopers brought in on a waggon 
from the old trail this side of the Diamond K.” 

Oh ! ” I said. 

“ And they’re the two troopers that went out 
with a man you’re becomin’ tolerably friendly 
with. And he’s lit out.” 

“ He’s gone ? ” 

“ He’s gone. Now, young man, you’ve got 
some tall thinking to do ; and be thankful you 
didn’t get more friendly than you did with that 
gent. He’s a man I admire ; but he’s a whole 
jag of danger to a bosom friend.” 

He closed the door and seemed by his manner 
to signify that the talk had finished. 

“ You come to me, young man, if you see a 


170 


HANDS UP ! 


square deal of a way out; but you want to go 
around and have a look at the play before you 
take a hand. It ain’t fair to let you buck into 
a game like this with the idea that the table 
lies just the way you left it.” 

“ Thank you, Colonel,” 1 said, and crossed to 
the hotel with a great deal in my mind to 
consider, and a certain trepidation. 

There was no one in the hotel. A hushed 
air reigned supreme in the bar-room. The 
barman sat at a table, writing arduously, with 
a bad pen, and tongue going in and out in time 
with the pen’s scratching. The proprietor 
looked sharply at me when 1 entered the room, 
and the tone of his “good-night, sir,” was 
reserved. 

I asked no questions. I merely awaited 
developments. 

Supper-time came, Scotty’s supper-hour came, 
but Scotty did not arrive. At the meal — 
and I was the only supperer — what I wanted for 
supper was all that the proprietor seemed to 
be interested in. I might have been a new 
arrival. I thought that perhaps I was about 
to be tabooed ; but I did not know the pro- 
prietor. This was no taboo. He simply was 
not going to talk — for my own sake too. Black 
Kettle was as desolate as on the night I first 
struck that deceptive “ city.” The nickel-in- 
the-slot machine stared with blank face on the 
winking leaden spittoon ; the stars looked 
under the eaves ; the dim lamp-light shone out- 
ward and cast an orange slab on the verandah. 


THE TWO TROOPERS 171 

With a queer feeling of being on the edge of a 
volcano, waiting for bad news, a sense of suspense, 
I sat in the dim-lit sitting-room ; then I passed 
to the dim-lit bar-room ; then to the verandah ; 
then back to the bar. I did not want to gp over 
to the dep6t. I knew that the troopers lay 
there. 

The troopers were brought in on a waggon, 
so much the Colonel had told me. But who had 
brought them in ? What had been said ? 
What had been done ? I had plenty of questions 
to ask, but I asked none, and barman and 
proprietor evaded me. Perhaps to-morrow 
would speak, of its own account. I went to 
bed, with my gun under my pillow, and slept, 
being quite tired. 

I ate a lone breakfast. The proprietor was 
mute. Scotty came over for his breakfast and 
merely nodded his head to me, snapped “ Morn- 
ing ! ” and sat down to eat, morose and wolfish. 
He was really too excited to speak at all this 
time. 

Then there came (after breakfast, when 1 
stood on the verandah asking myself what my 
plan of campaign was to be), trudging down the 
benches, a man packing blankets and looking 
as if he swore — ^whose shape I knew. It was 
my old friend Panamint Pete of the Diamond K. 

“ Hallo, Pete ! ” I hailed, as he marched up 
to the “ Palace.” 

I could have fallen into his arms. This mute 
Black Kettle was telling on me. 

“ Hallo, Bill ! ” and he flung his blanket roll 


172 HANDS UP ! 

down and came up the steps and pump-handled 
me. “ Still here ? ” he said. 

“ Still here,” 1 said. “ But I’m getting sick 
of being idle. Do you know of any jobs ? ” 

“ Looking for one myself,” he said. 

“ Quit ? ” I asked. 

“ Sure ! I can’t stand that foreman. What 
are you drinking ? Let me stand. I got my 
time with me.” 

We passed into the bar and liquidated. 
Then, plump and straight to the point, 1 asked 
the barman, unable to stand any more silence, 
whether patience and reticence were advisable 
or not : “ Do you know what’s become of the 

Apache Kid ? What happened last night ? ” 

He shook his head slowly. 

“ And I don’t want to know,” he said. “ That 
Apache Kid is all right. As a man I got no 
kick against him. I never saw him any other 
than a white man ; but he’s a storm-centre. 
Yesterday afternoon, just after you rides up the 
benches, two dead troopers comes down here on a 
waggon from the Circle Z — ^wonder you didn’t 
meet them,” and he looked at me, as I thought 
suspiciously. “ They goes aboard a freight 
passing through ” (so I was wrong in thinking 
they were at the depot) “ and now I ain’t 
interested. I don’t want to hear anything 
more. There’s things I am interested in. 
There’s boys I don’t want to know no more 
about. Them two troopers is of that brand. 

I ain’t got no use for them. They was the two 
troopers who went up in the hills with Apache 


THE TWO TROOPERS 173 

Kid. Now — what I say — it stands to reason 
he didn’t shoot them like that. He had just 
got out of trouble. He wasn’t looking for fresh 
trouble. There’s a heap of questions goin’ to 
be asked in Black Kettle mighty soon — ^and — 
I said enough. I’m trainin’ for silence — no 
savvy, that’s my motto right now.” 

“ Just you tell me this,” said I. “ Did 
Apache have a gun when he went out with the 
troopers ? I wasn’t around then you know. 
I was at the Diamond K.” 

“ Gun ? A gun ? Say ! I don’t think he 
had ! No — ^by heck, he hadn’t ! I’ll swear he 
hadn’t — but I don’t want nothing to do with 
that case. Apache should have stayed on here. 
Them two troopers brought in on the waggon 
sent him off. He should have stayed on here 
and proved himself innocent.” 

“ Not necessarily,” said I. “ He may have 
had business in Black Kettle and just finished 
it.” 

“ What kind of business could he finish so 
sudden — that he was right there on the dep6t 
when the waggon came down and when Scotty 
turned to look at him he had plumb evaporated.” 

“ Oh — it was like that ? ” 

“ It was like that. You mark my word, 
there’s going to be inquiries in Black Kettle, 
and Black Kettle is going to get a name for a 
hot burg. You pulls out maybe about two 
o’clock. Ten minutes after. Buck Johnson 
pulls out. Apache comes down about an hour 
after. He asks for you ” 


174 


HANDS UP ! 

“ For me ? ” I cried. 

The barman looked a little amazed at me, or 
curious. 

“ For you,” he said. “ I tells him I see you 
ride over to the benches — ^guessed you had gone 
back to the Diamond K. ‘ Oh yes,’ he says. 
Then he says : ‘ See friend Johnson around ? ’ 
— ‘ No,’ I says, ‘ I ain’t seen him around for 
some time. May-be he’s at the depdt.’ He 
strolls over to the depdt and as he goes over the 
waggon comes down. Scotty gets plumb excited. 
Scotty suggests sending ’em — that’s the two 
corpses — to Lincoln, on first freight. In comes 
the freight right then and Scotty and the team- 
ster look sidewise for Apache Kid — and he has 
plumb evaporated. Train pulls out. Now I’m 
quit. I’ve said all I’m goin’ to say.” i-, 

In bounded Scotty. I thought it was some 
fresh turn of Apache’s a:ffairs that brought him 
hither. But no. He was mute about Apache 
still. 

“ Hallo, you boys ! Want a job ?” he cried. 

We turned about. 

“Ido,” said I. 

“If horses is its name,” said Pete, “I’m 
open.” 

“ Well — Henry has wired to me to see if I 
can send him up some men.” 

“ Henry ? Oh ! That’s for round-up.” 

“ Who’s Henry ? ” I asked. 

“ Henry and Stell,” said Pete. 

“Yes, I’ve heard of them.” 

“ Well he’s wired to say that if I hear of any 


THE TWO TROOPERS 175 

men looking for a job he’s sending in a waggon 
for some stu:ff — and to send them out to him. 
There you are, boys.” 

“Have something on me,” said Pete and 
nodded his head to the bar. 

“ No — no — no 1 Excuse me this time, Pete. 
I want to keep on the water-waggon. If I take 
one glass I might take two — and then I talk.” 

“ Oh, pshaw,” said Pete. “ Can’t you get 
off once and jest wag the whip ? ” 

“No — nothing — Y ou ’ll excuse me, ’ ’ said Scotty. 
“ What in hell ! You scared you blab some- 
thing in your wild moments — something of your 
wild past ? ” asked Pete. 

“ I say, Scotty,” said I, “ can I hdVe a word 
with you ? ” 

He looked at me and then shook his head. 

“ You go to Henry’s and get to work,” he 
said and dived out of the hotel. 

“ Bug-house ! ” said Pete. “ Time he was 
on the water-waggon.” 

Then suddenly : “ Say,” he said and startled 

me as if he had fired his gun. “ Did you see 
that there pardon of Apache’s ? ” 

“ I did,” said I. 

Another long pause. 

“You cast your eye over it ? ” 

“Yes, I read it 
“ It was straight goods ? ” 

“ What do you mean ? ” 

“ It wasn’t a bluff of Apache’s ? ” 

“ No, it w^as no bluff. It was a genuine 
pardon.” 


176 


HANDS UP I 

“ Well, you wouldn’t be fooled. You’re a 
college man. You were satisfied about that 
pardon ? ” 

“ I was, absolutely. But I tell you what I 
wasn’t satisfied about ? ” 

“ Oh ! What was that ? ” 

“ Well, the pardon was all right, but it was a 
tall story ” 

“ The pardon makes the story true, don’t it ? 
If you believe the pardon you believe the whole 
story.” 

“It’s not that. These bonds were wanted 
very badly. Good, give him a pardon, get the 
bonds, and then — ” I left it in air. 

“ Government wouldn’t play a game like that.” 

“ That’s what even Apache Kid was not sure 
of,” I fired off at him. 

“ I had better tell the story,” said I and I 
told him, as lightly as I could, the whole affair 
of the hollow tree just as you know it. 

“ Say, this is a curious story,” said Pete 
when I had ended. “ But it has the brand of 
truth to any man who knows the curious wavs 
of life ” 

“ Well,” I said, “ you know it all now.” 

“ One thing I settle anyhow,” he said, “ and 
that is that I don’t throw no lariat in this 
contest. I lay off and look on. I see all the 
various possible moves, but I says right now 
that the game is a crooked game to begin. It 
begins with a hold-up. There you are ! When 
a game is crooked I reckon the turn of the cards 
is crooked too.” 


THE TWO TROOPERS 177 

After a long pause (in which he had been 
considering the whole affair, and my part in it, 
and Apache’s determination to be responsible 
for both, which had brought from Pete a cry of 
“ That was a white man — ^but only right ! ”), 
he extended his hand. 

“ This here hold-up,” he said, “ ain’t no 
or ’nary hold-up. This here hold-up is an 
almighty business — and I want to shake your 
hand. As a friend of civilisation you was plumb 
wrong. But as a gent and a man you was 
white, and I want to shake. But don’t you tell 
everybody.” 

“ I’ve told no one else,” I said. 

“ So far as that goes you ain’t told me,” 
he said. 

He gave my hand another pressure — and then 
we discussed Henry and Stells, otherwise known 
as “ The Triangle,” because of its brand, or 
“ The Pueblo Wall,” because of the remains of 
what was regarded as an old Pueblo beside it. 
That subject waned and his mind reverted again 
to Apache Kid ; abruptly he turned to me and 
asked me to repeat the story of the hollow 
tree ; and interjected many questions regarding 
details. When I ended, said he : 

“ Now remember Apache Kid’s words : ‘ You 
didn’t shoot anybody.’ He shot them both. 
They’re goin’ to get Apache sure — and there 
ain’t no sense in swingin’ with him only be- 
cause you happened to be on the trail that day, 
and because you was friendly enough to chip in 
on that deal the way any gent would do. No, 

M 


178 HANDS UP I 

sir. Don’t you forget, there ain’t a gent from 
Idaho to Arizona would say you killed one of 
them troopers. When a marshal shoots a 
hold-up man he ain’t a murderer, but the State 
is dispensing justice. Well, when you shoots 
that trooper you was only preventing him from 
committing a murder. You ponder on that 
and get it fixed proper in you — no hair-brand — 
but plumb well in. And don’t you go trying to 
help Apache with evidence, for you’ll be cross- 
questioned. You want from now on to have 
only heard of Apache Kid casual — and be very 
little interested in him.” 

Good advice, but 


CHAPTER XIV 

COW-SENSE 

It was riotous — ^and dirty — work. 

Always fond of horses, at the Triangle ranch 
I grew to love one or two. 

I know it is the fashion to say that the cow- 
puncher is dead. But he is not. True he does 
not trail herds now from Texas to Dodge City ; 
also he pays more heed to his stock nowadays 
in the way of breeding ; also he puts up at least 
a little hay for some animals. Yet he is not 
dead. It was not only at the Triangle that I 
decided the cow-puncher was not dead— later 
(as I shall tell) I had ample proof that he was not. 

Cattle-ranching on the old-time scale is, of 
course, only to be found now in Mexico. They 
say that General Terrazas, the Mexican cattle 
king, owns a million head of cattle. But I fear 
it will be little use for the cow-puncher of these 
States, when sheep have finally ousted him, to 
hit the trail for Durango and strike the boss 
{El Padron) in Chihuahua and Sonora ; for the 
vaquero draws but a few dollars a month and 
is always “ in the hole,” tied to his store-bill. 

At the Triangle, at any rate, I learned to love 
a horse. I remember well the one that, at four 
of the morning, my first morning at the Pueblo 
Wall, I selected from the saddle bunch. He 
stood on his hind legs and pawed the air as soon 
as I got my rope over his neck. Perhaps he 
thought, seeing that I cast the rope a good 


180 HANDS UP ! 

dozen times before I attained my end, that I 
was as poor a seat on a saddle as a hand with 
a rope. 

It was, at the moment, all very fine to re- 
member how Catlin, in his North American 
Indians, tells of the Cheyenne Indians lassoing 
wild horses, tightening the noose, and then 
coming closer and closer to the horse, still 
tightening the noose, and at last getting the 
lassoed horse’s head down and “ taking its 
breath.” It reads as possible. I quite believe 
that the Cheyennes did the trick. A cat or dog 
will smell a man’s breath to gain an under- 
standing of him. A horse may very well know 
that a man is friendly, although he is half 
throttling it, by smelling his breath. But I 
decided that I was not built after the pattern of 
the Cheyenne Indians of Catlin’s day. I merely 
hung on, dodged him when he came down, hung 
on again ; two men came to my aid then and we 
threw the brute and saddled him where he lay 
kicking on the ground. Then I straddled him, 
all of a tremble with the struggle — as excited as 
he. Then a yell — ^and up he rose — ^up we rose. 
But that was the worst of him. 

It was another horse, on another occasion, 
one who let me saddle him as if he was a rocking- 
horse, who unseated me ! He hung his head 
and looked round and watched me saddling 
in the most lugubrious fashion ; so dejected did 
he seem to be that I determined to practise 
roping and thus be able to pick what horse I 
fancied instead of taking what horse came 


COW-SENSE 181 

nearest. But he was bluffing and smiling at me. 
As soon as I was on his back he trotted forward, 
still bluffing, and then suddenly bucked the 
glorious buck that flung me over his head and 
under the lowest bar of the corral. I spent that 
first day in doing nothing else but riding these 
two horses. I christened the first Sub- 
missive and the second Meek — ^and sat in a 
bucket at supper-time, to the intense delight 
of the outfit. 

“ Pete’s partner is sure an original gent,” I 
heard one say. 

But the trick was not mine. My Quixote- 
loving father had told me (when I rode a donkey 
once in Arran, without a saddle — ^which, for 
discomfort, is like riding a cottage roof in an 
earthquake) that he had lived in the saddle by 
day when first he went to Venezuela — ^that was 
before his Chilian days — and sat in a bucket to 
his meals, and slept on his face ! 

But the incident gave me a new name. 1 was 
“ Bucket Bill ” thereafter, so far as the Triangle 
was concerned. An unfortunate nick-name it 
was to become, when later I struck a saloon 
with the boys, for it gave strangers the im- 
pression that I drank neither from glass nor 
bottle but from* — a bucket. 

Cowboys, in the old days, obtained more 
wages than sheep -herders. Sheep -herders, in- 
deed, very often obtained a bullet. But now, 
when the sheep-herder has his caravan and can 
run a home around with him, on wheels, and has 
sixty dollars a month, the cowboy has only forty. 


182 HANDS UP ! 

I have heard folk say that the fact that there 
are still plenty of men to ride the range shows 
that the old romance of the riding calls, and 
twenty dollars more a month does not, as they 
say, cut any ice. 

But, though there is something in that I 
think it is not all. Miners say : “As crazy as a 
prospector ” ; but cowboys say : “As crazy as 
a^sheep-herder.” And plenty of men fight shy 
of the sheep -herder’s lonely life : “ Baa ! Baa 1 
Baa ! ” from morning to night, and nothing but 
the hills, and the sky ; and the clouds coming 
up, and going over, and going down ; and the 
sun going up and going down — and the great 
dipper circling round, and Sirius a blue flame, 
and Mars a red, and nothing else but little winds, 
and silence, and snifi-snifi-snifiing of sheep. It 
is not every man who can hold down a sheep- 
herder’s job. 

The cow-puncher’s life is different. A man 
may be alone for hours ; but he is hunting 
cattle, yelling to them, following them — ^to 
meet another man with another bunch. And 
then there is the dinner, all together, about 
noon ; after that, work all together ; and then 
at night there is the company — ^the rise and fall 
of cigarette glow around the fire, the cans of 
tea that is like nectar, the beans, and flapjacks 
that are fit for kings— eaten in company. 
People condemn solitary drinking. But solitary 
eating is enough to drive a man to solitary 
drinking. 

At the Triangle, as at any ranch, there were 


COW-SENSE 183 

discomforts. You do not ride up hill and down 
dale from four of the morning till noon, driving 
cattle, without getting hot, nor do you get hot 
without sweat ; you do not work in, or around, 
the corrals, without more sweat. A round-up 
outfit knows the meaning of “ the dust and heat 
of the day.” 

There were representatives from half the 
ranches in the State, although the Triangle 
practically conducted its own round-up, its 
herds numbering well over the forty thousand. 

One day I would be sent out on a near reach 
and be in before noon. Another day I would be 
on the farther circles, and proud too of it, and 
come in late, drop off my horse and seize a tin 
plate with the best of them — but mighty happy 
and “ feeling good ” if the bunch I had added 
to the day -herd was a worthy one. 

Tea ! Tea has been my tipple ever since 
these days. It has never been the same tea, 
but I drink it nevertheless. I remember one 
night as I took up the pan of tea, feeling so 
“good ” and happy, recalling a phrase of 
Heraclitus, and I spilt some of that nectar on 
the ground before drinking, and looked up at 
the stars. My shirt was sticking to my shoulder 
blades and I was cold after the day’s work, but 
I poured a libation to the Gods — all on my 
lonesome there. 

There was a funny little pang the moment 
after (one gets sentimental too on the range) ; 
the pang was at the thought that I was quite 
alone in the camp — that “ Bucket spilt his tea,” 


184 


HANDS UP I 

if any noticed at all ; I doubt if any did. 
Certainly, that Bucket was worshipping, none 
would know. Perhaps all worship should be 
like that ; and the worship that has most 
flummery and pomp and circumstance, and 
takes place at stated times and hours, and to 
stereotyped words, is not worship at all, but a 
kind of attempt at a blufl on God. 

The fearfully, quiet, reserved, thoughtful 
impenetrable boss of my waggon gave me my 
flrst congratulation that night, the night of the 
libation. 

“ You’re breaking in well. Bucket. You 
never rode the range before, did you ? What 
was you doing at the Diamond K ? Cook’s 
bitch ? ” and he smiled, or his grey eyes did, 
in the fire-light. 

I nodded and laughed. 

“I mind a man in Oregon,” he said, “called 
himself an engineer. The engineer on the stern 
wheeler was sick and he got the job. He got 
us up all right, with a hundred and forty-five 
pounds of steam, and her certified for eighty ; 
and when we were squattering in to Columbia 
Landing he comes up on deck and asks for his 
wages. ‘ Anything wrong ? ’ asks the Captain. 
—‘Why,’ he says, ‘I’ve got up this length, 
but I’ve had enough. I never seen a stern- 
wheeler in my life before — ’ — ‘ Ain’t you a 
engineer ? ’ says the Captain. — ‘ Well,’ says he, 
‘ I stoked a lifting crane in Portland, Oregon, 
for one day, loading wheat. But this gauge 
on this here boat puzzles me.’ ” 


COW-SENSE 185 

My waggon boss laughed and turned away 
and I went, perfectly contented, to help myself 
from the Dutch oven. But my head was not 
swelled. I knew that after the round-up was 
over there would come other work when I would 
be expected to do more than sit a horse. 

I confess that by now I was forgetting home, 
and the face of my mother was fading further 
from me. In the Dago railway gang I was 
never free of it — it haunted me in a most heart- 
rending way — ^for when what is done cannot be 
undone one would not forget the loved — and 
yet to remember is anguish. When I read, at 
Black Kettle, of the hobo’s recovery at the 
Western Infirmary, I kicked myself ; and the 
misery I suffered at the Diamond K, because of 
feeling the utter lack of any necessity for ever 
having fled from Glasgow and broken my 
mother’s heart, tortured me. 

Here I began to relish life again — sadder and 
wiser, and often philosophising that I would 
never again tangle myself up with mortality — 
with other lives. I was feeling miserable still, 
but I fear that, in contrast with the recent 
agony, I was almost happy. 

Thinking that all that was necessary to make 
life perfect was a bath in the evening, and a 
suggestion to some of the boys not to pick 
their teeth with a fork — both changes absurd 
to hope for — I fell asleep under the stars ; the 
saddle, smelling of horse, for my pillow ; a 
grey blanket round me like a cocoon ; and so — 
I fell asleep. 


186 HANDS UP ! 

Some time in the night I wakened and saw the 
stars, and far off, in the valley, a deeper darkness 
of the herd ; and, sitting statuesque across the 
dip, on a ridge, one of the night-herders. 

Then asleep again — and I wakened abruptly 
in grey haze to the cry ; 

“ Tumble out, you sons of guns ! Tumble 
out ! 

The oven was the only brightness, the cook 
working before it, with illumined face and 
hands. A scent of wet sage would be in the air, 
wet sage, and coffee, and biscuits. Out of 
the wonderful mystery of haze, before the day 
would come, came the herd of ponies with the 
“ horse ranglers ” — ^and another day’s work 
was open before us — and another day had 
dawned on the great Dry Belt. 

To you it is not as to me — you are waiting for 
the Apache Kid. I had nearly forgotten him in 
writing of these first range days. He was, of 
course, discussed about the fire, but as often as 
not his name only led on to some tale of another 
brigand, train-robber, hold-up man ; or some 
horse-thief, brand-faker ; or townsmen (for I was 
not the only man at the Triangle who had begun 
life in a city) would tell of some cracksman. 

These townsmen interested me, but not so 
much as the men who had been at the life all 
their days : they drifted to the range for this 
or the other reason, mostly for love of space, 
and chance to waggle an elbow without jostling 
some one — other reasons, too, doubtless, moved 
some, to judge by their expressions. There 


COW-SENSE 187 

were one or two who looked mighty tough and 
talked little. 

Pete, knowing what would be coming anon, 
gave me many a wrinkle. When we had the 
opportunity, as once or twice when he rode in 
with me during the days of “circle riding,” 
he would tell me the ages of some animals, and 
then let me state what ages 1 believed others 
to be. 

“ Your waggon foreman,” said he, “ is pretty 
good to you. Shouldn’t be surprised if he 
would allocate you a cow-pony one of these 
days and put you off that tarnation lonesome 
holding the herd, put you to do some cutting 
out — but he’s struck on you and he’ll allocate 
you a pony that will do half the work for you. 
Some folk try to scare men off the range by 
telling them none but an expert can lasso. 
No others need apply, they says. You wait 
and you’ll see. Half the lasso -throwing ain’t 
throwing at all. You get a good cow -pony and 
he’ll see where you’re heading and carry you 
there, through a hull herd. Then you just 
drops your lariat over the horns and the pony 
walks out. It’s all right. He’ll come.” 

I feel that I must interject a comment here 
that an old cow-puncher was speaking ; and 
these are not my sentiments. Pete, with a long 
enough rope, could lasso the moon I believe. 
He was always the kind of man to make light 
of his work, and also he was an encouraging man, 
perhaps because he was successful himself at 
his work. I have noticed in all professions and 


188 


HANDS UP ! 

callings that the bluffers, they who are really 
incompetent and hold their jobs by bluff, are 
generally the ones to advise a beginner to go 
back to where he came from. 

“Well,” said I, “I suppose I’ve to report to 
the^boss that a cow with the Triangle brand 
gotj^away from me to-day.” 

“ What was that for ? ” 

“ Well — ^you know how they all start 
going, heads down, tails up, as soon as they 
hear you yell — ^the long-horns I mean. All 
you have to do is to ride along the tops of the 
buttes ? ” 

“Yes, that’s right — with long -horns ; different 

from them Suffolks and Surreys and 

Jerseys.” 

“Yes, you can run them down two gulches 
at once if they’re Texans, just by coming from 
one side to the other and whooping ” 

“ Sure ! But where does the eloping cow 
come in that you mentioned in last week’s 
number ? ” 

“ Oh ! She ain’t calved yet,” I said. “ I’m 
coming to her.” 

Pete wagged his head, appreciating, hardly 
smiled, and remarked : 

You’re learning the cattle industry, sure 
thing. You’re getting repartee, and you’ll be 
a credit yet to the Pueblo Wall. Well, what 
about the curious cow ? ” 

“ Oh, she was up on the top and I came quite 
close to her, and drove her a bit. She didn’t 
run.” 


COW-SENSE 189 

“ I see. She was lonesome — not with a 
bunch.” 

“That’s right. She was on top. I had to 
drive her and drive her, a cow, Pete, a cow — 
drove her and drove her, and then she turned 
bang round and charged me. This pony just 
jumped.” 

“ Sure thing. Wiser than you.” 

“And when we dodged she charged again. 
The pony wanted to run ” 

“ Didn’t you take his advice ? ” 

“ Why no ! I got back again at her. The 
end of it was that we dodged her again, and the 
pony slipped on the edge — and we did a somer- 
sault.” 

“ A somerset ? ” 

“ Yes. It’s a wonder I didn’t get my neck 
broken.” 

“ It is, sure. You want to go down to Mexico 
City and be a Toreador — Oh Toreador ! and 
stick rosettes in the bulls and get bookays from 
the sehoritas. Well, go on — I’m interested. 
It’s only this invigorating air making me pert.” 

“ I rolled to the bottom after the somersault 
and the pony came down to meet me — and I left 
her — I left that — cow, because when I got up 
again farther along I found that the bunch in 
the next gulch had turned and was straying 
away back again.” 

Pete smiled and considered. 

“ It’s a wonder to me,” he said, “ that a man 
like you, self-educated in cows, so to speak, 
enough to run two bunches that a-way, with 


190 


HANDS UP I 

crossing from one to the other, didn’t have the 
savey to leave that cross-grained cow alone.” 
“ I did.” 

“ Yes, eventooaly. But you needed a tumble 
first, and had to see, with your own eyes, the 
ninety and nine a-straying. You didn’t ever 
go to Sunday school, if you did go to co — ” He 
stopped, for joshing is joshing, but it is not 
considered according to Hoyle to chip a man 
too much about being a college man. There 
are men on the range, as everywhere, who 
announce that they are “ college men ” — ^but 
the real ‘‘college man” don’t like too much 
“ college man ” slung at them. 

“You want to learn by sad experience,” he 
ended. 

“ Well, what about the cow ? ” I asked. 

“Oh, you can mention her if you like, but I 
wouldn’t mention your draw-poker game with 
her — not unless you want to be amusing.” 

“ I never thought a cow would behave like 
that,” I cried, wheeling aside to gather in a 
steer that was trying to lead away a little 
section of the herd, and riding back again. 

“ Only cows will, my son,” said Pete, pater- 
nally, when I rode to his side again, “ at least 
generally speaking. A bull will argue it with 
you right there, sometimes, but when a cow 
gets that way — argumentative — leave her — to 
hell with her — she’ll come in at the next round- 
up — or she’ll go into another round-up and be 
cut out and drove where she belongs ; or she’ll 
think it over and follow on later when she 


COW-SENSE 191 

gets lonesome. Never argue with a woman, 
my son.” 

It was late on the night of the day of these 
lessons when a screaming of wheels announced 
the arrival of another waggon into the plain 
from the home ranch. 

The steers rose — ^they had already settled — 
and the clicking of horns began again. We 
tumbled out (we who had already loosened belts 
and boots) and caught what ponies we could, 
and rode over to help the herders, riding round 
and round the herd till the outsiders, that were 
trying to break away, milled again and lay 
down with many grunts. 

Then we came circumspectly back — no whoop- 
ing it up, with a night herd of that size and 
nervousness ; left them with a thought like that 
in the old song : 

Lay nicely low cattle, 

DonH heed any rattle, 

But quietly doss till the dawn. 

For if you skedaddle 
We'll jump in the saddle. 

And head you as sure as you're horn. 

We left the herders singing to the herd, and 
drove quietly back to camp, the herders’ voices 
following us, fading, mellowing with distance, 
dying away — ^to find a cluster standing at the 
fire — an excited group, around the new arrival, 
glimpses of fire darting between their legs, 
lighting up the undersides of their faces, giving 
a wild, almost eerie look, to the camp. 


192 


HANDS UP ! 


I really think it is such pictures that con- 
stitute half the lure of the round-up camps 
to-day, even as yesterday. 

As I dismounted and unsaddled, I heard, 
from the crowd- : 

“ Well, I’m sorry for Apache Kid. I ain’t 
got no use for hold-ups, no more’n for horse- 
stealers — ^but he ain’t no or’nary low-down 
horse-thief. I was working at Colonel Nye’s 
when he went out after that there lost cabin 
that I guess you all hears of ; I heerd all that 
story, and 1 heerd how he was suspected of two 
hold-ups but got off. Reckon he was guilty ” 

1 became irritated at the long-windedness. 
I passed over to the group. 

“ Well, he’s up against it now,” I heard. 
“ They’re going to fill him full of lead this time.” 


CHAPTER XV 

ag’in the government 

Side on to the camp-fire stood a teamster 
reading out the news about Apache Kid. I 
do not remember the exact words of that 
latest published information regarding the train- 
robber ; I did not keep copies of the news- 
papers, but they went something like this — 
and were thus read by the teamster : 

“ The worthy train-robber or ‘ hold-up ’ man, 
who rejoices in the — ^rejoices in the — in the— 
(Oh to hell !) of ‘Apache Kid,’ has leapt again 
suddenly to the fore-front in the public eye. 
Only the other day he was safely ensco — 
ensco — (Oh to hell I Another long word I) ” 

“Ensconced,” prompted a man who sat 
nursing his knees by the fire and looking up on 
the reader, listening with open mouth and 
some contempt. 

The teamster yelped : “ Am I reading 

this paper or are you ? ” 

My waggon-boss poured oil on the troubled 
waters. 

“That’s all right. Don’t you interrupt,” he 
said. “Do you think you could read it any 
better ? ” 

The corrector ’quailed at this implied threat, 
dreading a request to give an exhibition of his 
power to read a newspaper more accurately. 

“ I don’t say that,” he fired off. 

“ Well, go on,” to the teamster ; and then 
193 N 


194 HANDS UP ! 

to the corrector : “ There’s college gents here, 
content to listen without correcting. And if a 
college gent can get the savvey without interrup- 
tion I reckon there ain’t no call for any gent to 
correct.” To the teamster again : “ You go 

on, sir ; you’re doing very well.” 

Thus appeased, the teamster continued. It 
was a queer story that he read. It would 
appear, according to the newspaper version, 
that the gaolers had brought some pressure to 
bear upon Apache Kid ; but what manner of 
pressure was not stated. There was a clever 
suggestion, which the reader could take or leave, 
that gentle torture had been perhaps employed, 
or maybe threatened ! At any rate, Apache 
Kid had gone out, under some compulsion, with 
two troopers, to show them where certain 
valuable stolen property had been hidden. 
And now they w^ere dead — and he was wanted. 
A reward of one thousand dollars was offered 
for the capture, alive or dead, of Apache 
Kid. 

“ Oh ! ” cried out one ; “ but there’s some- 
thing behind all this. You ain’t bin to Black 
Kettle recent or you would know. Apache Kid 
was in Black Kettle. Now, he must ha’ bin in 
Black Kettle after shoot in’ up the two troopers. 
Scotty, the brass-pounder, over at Black Kettle 
— the agent — he says Apache went out with 
them all right. They came down there all on 
the jump, in a special train, with their own 
horses, and Apache rides a horse that' Scotty 
went across to the livery stable and got for him. 


AG’IN THE GOVERNMENT 195 

Then Apache went up to the hills with them. 
Next thing he comes back.” 

“ Alone ? ” asked somebody ; and I waited 
for the reply from this man who had the real 
news to add to the newspaper news. 

“ Yap, alone ; ” he said. “ Scotty says that 
he asks the Apache Kid about the troopers, 
and Apache says as how they had hit the trail 
over to Lone Tree instead of coming back to 
Black Kettle — fearing celebrations there. But 
Apache Kid had a pardon for the hold-up all 
right,” he fired off as a final crusher. 

“A pardon ! ” 

“ A pardon ? ” 

“ Sure thing. Everybody in Black Kettle 
heerd of that. He had a pardon for the hold-up, 
a full pardon, on consideration that he would 
show where these here Government properties 
was cached. Now — Apache ain’t goin’ to shoot 
up the men that come with him to git that 
property — and him with a pardon in his pocket.” 

My heart gave a series of clutches. I felt like 
one about to take a plunge on a chill day. 

“ Did any one see this here pardon ? ” asked 
the boss. 

Something told me to be silent ; and then 
everything went hazy ; and with a feeling of 
being unwise and yet, somehow, right, I stepped 
forward. 

“ Sure ! ” cried Pete. “ He waved that 
pardon about considerable,” and he thrust me 
back, and shook his head at me. 

“ Did any man read it ? ” asked the boss. 


196 


HANDS UP ! 

“ I did,” said I, and came clear into the 
cluster, which fell apart. Pete let out a long, 
great sigh and stood back. 

“ And more than that — I saw the shooting of 
the two troopers,” I continued. Pete fell back 
with a hopeless toss of his head and gesture of 
his arm. 

It was a thunderbolt for them. 

I had decided to talk ; and I told them the 
whole story, all except the part of it relating to 
my journey to Mrs. Johnson with her husband’s 
share of the hold-up takings. I told them 
all about my shooting of one of the troopers, 
and what Apache had said on that head. At 
that point I knew, by the cries of admiration, 
that they were Apache’s friends. 

“ And now, gentlemen,” I ended. “ What I 
want to know is — ^where do I come into this ? 
If Apache is captured have I to give myself up 
and tell the story as I’ve told you ? ” 

The boss stared. 

“ What ! ” he yelled. 

The crowd circled closer. There was an 
odour of singeing trousers and scorched sheep- 
skin leggings. They forgot the fire in their 
eagerness. 

“ Well,” said I, “ I’m a witness to the thing — 
to tell how they tried to kill him. But I shot 
one of the men.” 

“ Say,” said the boss, “ if you do anything so 
foolish we’ll put you under restraint, we will. 
What do you say, boys ? ” 

“ Sure 1 ” 


AG’IN THE GOVERNMENT 197 

“ Sure I ” 

“ Sure ! We’ll cache you where you’ll not 
be heerd of till Apache has played his game.” 

“ Sure ! Apache is playing a lone hand from 
now on. You just stepped in where he was 
liable to loose, and says you : ‘ These gents 
have got their cyards stacked,’ and you gave 
him a fresh chance. But he plays a lone hand 
all the same.” 

“ Sure 1 He’d have passed in his checks then 
if you had not stepped in. Now — just you 
leave off chipping in. He’s the kind of man 
any gent is liable to help, but he is dangerous 
as a friend. He’s a road-agent and train- 
robber ; and when you chips in with him as a 
man, you are sure preparing for getting locked 
up later as a brother road-agent. You leave 
it to somebody else to save him again ” 

“Ain’t you a white man?” a gruff voice 
demanded of me, and one of our toughest hands 
— an old timer, with mahogany face, and heavy 
tusks of moustaches that looked cream-colour 
against his bronze — ^gripped my shoulder. 

“ Well — I want to be,” I said. 

“ Pshaw ! ” he growled. “ Just you be. A 
crooked man may want to be white ; but a 
white man, if he goes around splitting hairs to 
be white, is going to get plumb pallid and 
ghost-like.” 

“ That’s right, and put like an expert orator,” 
said Pete. And then to me : “I tried to keep 
you from talking at all to begin with, if only 
you could have seen.” 


198 


HANDS UP I 

“ Oh ! ” said the waggon-boss, “ I saw you 
signalling ; so I knew he had some card in 
reserve for play when it was wanted. Well, my 
son, and college gent, I’m glad you showed us 
that card before you played it, for now we 
threaten you that if you show any signs of going 
into the game we are sure going to put you 
under restraint. Ain’t that right, boys ? ” 

It made my eyes haze a second to hear the 
unanimous : “ Sure thing I ” and to see the 
faces (that I am sure, in the mass, would have 
terrified a New York, or Boston, drawing-room), 
bronzed and blackened, and with the firelight 
playing tricks on them, all turned on me 
determinedly. 

There was not a man there who would make 
a bid for the thousand dollars offered for the 
arrest of Apache Kid. But they were determined 
to keep me out of his story, considering that I 
had gone just deep enough to rescue, but that if 
I went deeper I might drown with him. 


CHAPTER XVI 

OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT 

The life and adventures of the Apache Kid were 
not to interfere with the work on the range. 

I did my share in the exciting and dirty 
work of cutting out ; and sometimes was told 
off to lend a hand at the branding during the 
succeeding days. 

I think the foreman was giving me a chance 
to learn all there was “to it,” as he would say. 
The old timer I have mentioned remarked to 
me once, in a lull ; 

“ Which I don’t know what wages you’re 
gettin’, my son, but you are sure ropin’ in 
experience.” 

Pete’s expectation was fulfilled. I had cow- 
ponies to work with, during cutting out, that 
were all “experts.” In the herd I found no 
recalcitrant cows ; steers might fight there, 
clash horns together, create dust and circlings, 
move to the outside, and be turned back by the 
herd guards. Now and then a thoughtful cow 
would walk deliberately from the herd, a string 
following her, but they would all crowd back 
again, as soon as one of us headed them off. 

The cutting was in full progress — steer cut, 
and cow and calf cut. My job, one day, was to 
look only for the Triangle brand on cows. 
The calf would be by the cow’s side, bewildered 
and clinging. Then all I had to do was to drop 
the lariat over the mother’s horns and start out. 

199 


200 


HANDS UP ! 

What fascinated me was the way the pony 
w^ould note, firstly, what cow I had selected, 
and then, secondly, when my lariat fell — and 
start edging out of the herd before either knee 
or bridle had prompted him. ^ ^ 

Another day I was told off to assist two men 
from a neighbouring ranch in the work of cutting 
out the cattle bearing their brand that had 
strayed amidst our herds. Again, I was told 
off to join a branding crew ; and I think I was 
looked upon with a certain measure of pride 
(instead of with annoyance as an interloper) 
wherever I went, looked upon so not for myself, 
but because of my connection with the affair 
of Apache Kid who was now making our section 
famous — or notorious. 

There was also a certain air, among the boys, 
of watching me, as if they feared I might 
stampede, stricken by some sudden mad idea 
to throw in my lot with the fortunes of the 
Apache Kid. But I saw by then, quite clearly, 
that it would do no good for me to make any 
public confession. Apache had killed one 
trooper anyhow. It was his trouble. The 
arguments of the outfit had convinced me as 
sound. And if a generous cow-puncher advises 
a man to turn no cards in a certain game, you 
can be sure that the game is bad indeed. A 
cowboy is not the kind of man to advise merely 
a “ safe deal.” 

Work in the corrals will put all other thoughts 
out of any man’s head, especially if he knows 
that he is there as a favour, because he is 


OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT 201 

liked and not because of his superlative skill. 
What he lacks in skill he will have to balance 
by determination and sheer output of muscle. 

Here is where you will see the real roping. 
Here you will see a calf noosed by the horns 
and snubbed, and, next moment, a rope twirl 
before him, just where his forefeet are going, 
twirl before him — a flick, and his forelegs are 
roped, and down he goes. When the ropes 
caught the calves by the hind legs the work of 
throwing and holding was far easier than when 
the neck was caught. 

It is wild work : a lariat spins near you and 
disappears. You wrestle a c^f, and as you 
wrestle it a tautened rope, between some other 
saddle horn and roped calf, appears before 
you, ready to trip you. You learn to be a 
sooty, ensanguined gymnast. 

All day the work went on to the sound of 
calves and cows bawling each to each, shouts of 
the tallyman sitting on high where the revolving 
gate gave entrance to the large corral, shouts 
for the iron, shouts when calves rose, cut loose, 
indignant at the treatment accorded them. 
Representatives from surrounding ranches sat 
on the top rail beside the tallyman, smoking 
and at ease. 

I soon learnt how to kneel on the head and 
grasp the forelegs of a downed calf. Then 
would come the shout for the branding iron, 
the sound of it, the sizzle, the smell. On some 
ranches there is a man told off at the swing gate 
between the corrals to ear-mark, cutting the 


202 


HANDS UP I 

ears with the ranche’s cut, as the calves pass 
through. On others this is done by a man who 
is in the actual branding corral beside the 
iron man. It is all very slick work. Even the 
gate man has a very lively job swinging the gate 
now left, now right, according to what animals 
come along, according to whether they be 
for branding, or for running aside into the 
neighbouring corral where the strays of other 
ranges bawl. 

By sundown every one in the branding corral 
was splashed to the eyes with dung and blood, 
black with dirt and soot. I had several 
knuckles a-bleeding, and my nails were torn with 
grappling. Outside the corral the roar rose 
and fell all day — of calves and cows calling to 
each other, upset by the sundering of them. 

I have no doubt that I was far more tired 
than necessary by night, because there is a 
trick in throwing calves — as in most things — 
and though I watched it performed intently, 
and imitated it eagerly, I often had to put on 
much more muscle than necessary to compensate 
for what I lacked in the ju-jitsu of the business. 

I can quite understand the stories one hears 
of dukes’ sons and the sons of “ belted earls ” 
going back to the range. I know, by my own 
experience, how the range calls its lovers back. 
Once, years after, a visit to the old country was 
shortened for me because, out of an old country 
open grate a spluttering coal discharged a red-hot 
fragment on to the hearthrug. And the vision 
of my empty hostess posing before me like a 


OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT 203 

Sargent portrait, and the sound of her inane 
and ceaseless laughter, and her “ Ah, doncher 
know ? ” became, instead of pathetic, revolting. 
A picture had been conjured up by that odour 
of singed rug — not a picture of the branding 
corral only. The corral was but the jumping - 
oft' place to which the smell of singeing took me, 
the jumping-off place for the flooding pictures 
of space, rolling land, foothills, bastions of the 
Bad Lands. I went home early from that 
house, mighty ashamed that I had ever strayed 
into such an outfit of poseurs — and I cut short 
my visit home too. 

Perhaps six weeks later, when the round-ups 
in our vicinity were over, and many of our men 
were away attending other neighbouring round- 
ups, the foreman told me to hitch up a team 
and go into Black Kettle. 

“ You come from Black Kettle,” he said, 
“so you may as well take this job. We get 
our supplies mostly from Lone Tree ; but there’s 
a consignment at Black Kettle for us.” 

So at sun-up next day I was gathering the 
reins and rolling out for Black Kettle, and thus 
again sat, content and tired, two evenings 
later, under the stars on the Palace hotel 
verandah. Who should come into my half 
sleepy content, with bent head, half recognising 
me and yet wanting to make sure, but my old 
railway boss, Douglas ! We leapt at each other 
and pump-handled vigorously. 

“Well,” said he, looking me up and down, 
“how do you enjoy shovelling dung instead of 


204 


HANDS UP I 

shovelling gravel ? I mind my young brother 
was terrible eager to be a soldier — ^thought it 
was all riding around in a dinky tunic. When 
they put him scrubbin’ floors and carryin’ wood 
he quit. There was some spirit of rebellion in 
his troop at the time and he joined in with the 
mutineers, stalled on doing chores instead of 
bein’ a picture soldier. They were stationed 
up at some fort near the boundary and they 
just stepped across to a Canadian Mounted 
Police dep6t over the line, the whole bunch of 
malcontents, and they all stripped their clothes 
and gets a receipt from the police-boys and was 
sitting around in civilian’s clothes when the 
rest of the troop came to take them back. 
There was nothin’ to do but laugh. By the 
time that any red tape arrangements could 
be made for liftin’ them across the boundary 
my brother was in Australia. Next I hear of 
him he’s in the New South Wales police. Kids 
is funny when a uniform is concerned.” 

I thought Douglas was pulling my leg with a 
tall story, but the bar-keep — ^yes, we had 
wandered, subconsciously, to the bar-room 
while Douglas spoke — chipped in : 

“That’s right — ‘extradition,’ they calls it. 
I remember that fracas — ^up in Montana it was. 
But that was half a troop that deserted. There 
was a funnier thing with one of the police boys. 
He had got a kick against the force — ^which 
ain’t usual. I ain’t struck on Canucks; but 
these Canuck police-boys is the most proud of 
their profession of any soldiers I ever knew. 


OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT 205 

I was up at Pincher Creek when it happened. 
One of the boys had a grudge against his 
corporal, or his routine, or something ; and one 
day he pikes out of the R.N.-W.M.P. shack in his 
birthday garments, and he runs like hell for 
the boundary. The corporal runs after him 
and then stops when there was no doubt that the 
police-boy was in Ammurican territory. The 
mother naked young man borrows a blanket 
from a Blackfoot squaw what was standing by, 
and he executes a dance, and spans his nose at 
hisjlate corporal. If there had been no folks 
around, I surmise that corporal would have been 
liable to step over into Ammurica proper and pull 
the police -boy back again, and arrest him.” 

“ Pardon me,” 1 said. “ You said ‘ American* 
just 'now. Is Canada not in America ? ” 

The bar-keep looked me up and down, smiling 
“ Not yet ! ” he said. 

So off we went into a pleasant wrangle, in 
which the American Eagle spread his wings 
until he might have split his chest — and time 
flew past. At last I asked Douglas how he was 
getting on. 

“ Have you still got that D^o gang ? ” 1 
asked. / 

“ Sure,” he said. / 

“ And find them satisfactory ? ” 

“ Sure ! I’m satisfied all right. I’ve just 
been down seeing the Superintendent of the 
Division. It seems that the Dago agent who 
supplies them says he’s heerd from them that 
they want to quit badly. They’ve filed a 


206 


HANDS UP ! 

petition to him — kind of round-robin. He’s 
been agitating so severely that the Superin- 
tendent sent for me to run down and see him. 
Am I not satisfied with them ? You bet your 
life 1 am.” 

“ The white gang is up beside you now,” I 
suggested. 

“Not yet,” he said. “They delays coming. 
I’m the only white man up the line — and I am 
surely enjoying myself. Say — ” his voice 
dropped, “ Dunnage — ^the section-boss — tells me 
he was working away on the line and they stands 
aside to let a freight go past. It was at a grade. 
Sometimes they nearly looses them heavy 
grades with heavy trains, and has to slide back 
and charge it.” 

“ I know,” said I. 

“ Well — ^they was going very slow, just 
crawling past, and Dunnage and his gang 
standing by. And so they could see under all 
the cars. And who do you think was playing 
hobo, stealing a ride, lying underneath on a 
brace-rod ? ” 

“ Who ? ” 

“Apache Kid,” he said quietly. He looked 
at me attentively. 

“ Look here, Douglas,” I said, ** I’ve been 
waiting for some one to mention him. I was 
advised to say little about him till I was spoken 
to. Do you know, I like that man.” 

“So do I,” said Douglas, and nodded. 

“ He may be a train-robber, but ” 

“He never robbed a train of mine!” said 


OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT 207 

Douglas, and laughed. “And besides, there’s 
a story going round here about him having a 
pardon. Now, that night I saw him tangled 
up with the train trimmings, that was the day 
that the two troopers was brought in here. 
I read the papers, but there’s something crooked 
there. Everybody here tells me that he said 
he had a pardon — ^took it out and flourished it 
too. But then Apache is deep.” 

“ 1 saw the pardon,” said I. 

“ To read ? ” 

“ Sure ! I read every word of it, all the 
‘ Whereases’ about the hold-up, and trial, and 
conviction — and a full pardon.’* 

“ On condition ? ” 

“ No. No condition. It was just a full 
pardon.” 

“ Um ! That makes me believe the story 
I heard all the more. They would not put the 
reason for the pardon in cold print.” 

“ No — of course not.” 

“ Then why in thunder did he shoot the two 
troopers who came with him ? ” 

“ Did he shoot them ? ” I asked. 

“ Well he ran, didn’t he, when they came in ? 
He was underneath the very same train that 
carried them back to Lincoln ! Dropped ofl 
somewhere on the line and vamoosed ! ” 

“True,” I said, “but then he had been up 
against the Government — and he was going 
to be blamed whether he did kill them or 
not.” 

“ Um. But I don’t seem to find the story 


208 HANDS UP I 

quite satisfying. There’s something behind it. 
So far as I’m concerned I’ve nothing to say to it. 
If Apache Kid came right into my camp I would 
give him a meal and pass him on without a 
word. I want to have the pros and cons of the 
thing — even if Government is at the back of it — 
before I budge one way or another.” 

We retired to the verandah to discuss the case 
further ; and we were so employed when Colonel 
Kemp came over to the verandah and said, 
peering up through the dusk to be sure of me : 

“ May I have a word with you, young man ? ” 

“ Certainly.” 

I stepped down to him, but he urged me back 
up the steps by my elbow ; led me into the lit 
bar-room, glanced round to see that we were 
alone, and then held forth a newspaper, pointing 
to a paragraph. 

“ Read that,” he said. 

What I read was by no means pleasing. It 
told a pretty story indeed of some sleuth’s 
cleverness. Apache Kid was still abroad in the 
land, a free man ; but “ our special corre- 
spondent ” had probably got a clue that would 
hasten his capture. The foreman of a well- 
known ranchman had informed him that, on 
a trail above Black Kettle, he had seen Apache 
Kid in company with one of his hands, had seen 
him there on the very day that the two troopers 
(after found dead) rode out from Black Kettle 
with the Apache Kid. There was, he said, no 
sign of any trooper on the trail. He saw no 
blue-coat. But he discharged his cowboy on 


OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT 209 

the spot — for the cowboy had been sent out to 
some work in the morning and should not have 
been in that neighbourhood. Knowing the 
name that Apache Kid had, and not wanting 
undesirables in his outfit, the foreman had fired 
his cowboy ! Interviewed as to his reason for 
his suspicion he had told that it had been 
roused by the fact that the cowboy in question 
had signed on to his outfit as “ William Barclay ” 
and, later, a letter had come for him as “ John 
Williams.” 

“ Where is William Barclay — alias John 
Williams, or John Williams — alias Will Barclay ?” 
ended the column. “ Can he shed a light on the 
mystery of the two troopers ? ” 

“ He can ! ” I cried, “ he can ! Come here. 
Colonel,” and I caught him by the coat lapel, so 
hastily that I caught an end of beard also, and 
apologised. “ Come along 1 ” and I marched 
him to the corner table, and shouted to Douglas 
to join us, and shouted for the proprietor, and 
forced them — ^they all much astonished — into 
chairs, and sat down confronting them. 

“ Now ! ” I said. “ I know you, gentlemen, 
are all white. I have a story to tell you.” 

“ And the title is what ? ” asked the amazed 
proprietor. 

“ Apache Kid,” said I. 

“ Um ! ” he said. 

“This Apache Kid,” said I, “is a train- 
robber, but ” 

I paused. 

“You would remark,” said the Colonel, 


o 


210 HANDS UP ! 

“ that there is more in this Apache Kid trouble 
than meets the eye ! ” 

“ Bar-keep ! ” said the proprietor. 

“ Sir ! ” 

“ Set ’em up on me.” 

And then, very deliberately, I told them the 
story of the Apache Kid from the day he had 
come to my aid at the Dago camp, leaving out 
only the matter of the money I had carried to 
Mrs. Johnson for him. When I told of the 
attempt on him at the hollow tree the Colonel 
held out his hand and shook mine. 

Douglas at that sat back. 

“ Do you mean to tell me that Government 
would tell these troopers to—” began the 
proprietor, puzzled -looking. 

“No, sir,” said Douglas, “but luck plays into 
the hands of railways and governments. I still 
has faith in the United States, but there’s indi- 
viduals I don’t trust no more than a spread rail. 

“Here’s to Apache Kid anyhow,” said the 
proprietor, and lifted his glass. 

“The point for us,” said the Colonel, “is 
that the city of Black Kettle don’t have any 
connection with corralling the Apache Kid, or 
attempting to corral him. What’s this ? ” 

A wild whoop sounded without ; a howl — 
and entered that cowboy who had been told by 
the foreman of the Diamond K : “ I’m looking 
for ropers,” to which he had replied : “ You’ll 
find heaps of them.” 

He dashed up to the bar-keep without seeing 
us as we sat in the corner. 


OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT 211 

“ Say ! ” he said, “ is there a gent name of 
Barclay, or Williams, or Alias Bill, in Black 
Kettle ? ” 

The bar-keep was mute, and — so heated was 
the cow-puncher’s manner — that I slacked my 
gun in the sheath before 1 coughed and said : 

“ Here I am, sir ! ” 


CHAPTER XVII 

ANOTHER CONVERT 

“ Could I have a word with you, sir ? ” asked 
the newcomer. 

“Certainly,” said I, and accompanied him 
over to a corner. 

“ You recalls me, I guess ? ” he asked. 

“ I do,” said I. “ You are the gentleman to 
whom the foreman of the Diamond K said : 

‘ I’m looking for a good roper.’ ” 

He smiled faintly. 

“ Yap, and I says : ‘ You’ll find heaps of 
them in this state.’ Yap — you recalls me all 
right. I’m Yuma Bill and I ain’t no slouch. 
Which I don’t stand for no man to look me up 
and down and offer me a job that aways — 
trying to get me to ask if there is a chance of a 
job, instead of which he’s wanting me for a job. 
Give me a straight game. Which the only 
answer possible if a man says : ‘ I’m lookin’ 
for a roper,’ is : ‘ Well, you’ll find heaps.’ 

Now, that man acts every way like that. There’s 
bin some official person up at the Diamond K 
and he’s told them about meeting you and 
Apache Kid, and put them on to me for cumula- 
tive evidence. Up they comes to the Three 
Bars and asks for me. They has information 
that I was on the trail the day them two 
troopers goes out for a passear in the hills 
with Apache, which turns out no brief passear, 
but leads ’em to the Go den Gates sudden and 
212 


ANOTHER CONVERT 213 

simultaneous. I looks at these officials. Here’s 
a nice way to start with a man — kind of in- 
sinuating I had plugged them ” — he paused 
as if for my opinion. 

“ If they had thought so,” said I, “ they 
would not have begun in that way.” 

“Well no — I see that afterwards. If they 
had thought that, they’d have begun with : 
‘ Yuma Bill, I arrests you in the name of the 
law.’ I reckon that would have made trouble 
too. Anyhow, they begin like what I narrates 
to you. So I says : ‘ Put your cards down and 
let me see your hand. I ain’t playin’ in this 
game ; but I can direct you some in a play 
maybe.’ — ‘Where was you,’ they says, ‘on 
the third of the month ? ’ they says. 

“ ‘ Third of the month ? Third of the month ? 
Let me see. Why, I was in Black Kettle,’ 
I says. — ‘ When did you leave Black Kettle ? ’ 
they says. — ‘Before noon,’ I says. ‘If I had 
bin sensible I’d have had my siesta in the shade 
of the Palace Hotel and hit the trail subse- 
quent.’ — ‘ Did you meet anybody on the trail ? ’ 
they asks me. It was at this here point that 
I tumbles to it where they had come from, 
because there was a Diamond K boy guides 
them over and his presence enters my per- 
ception. I reckon they needed a guide, wasn’t 
competent to follow a waggon-track, let alone a 
staked trail. I says : ‘ I met a boss -wrangler, first 
day, who calls himself a foreman ; and he says to 
me : I’m lookin’ for a good roper,” and I says to 
him : You’ll find heaps of them in this state.” ’ 


214 


HANDS UP I 

“ ‘ Who was this man ? ’ they asks. 

“ ‘ A hoss-wrangler who thinks he’s a fore- 
man,’ says I. 

“ They turns to Kelly, who was on the 
carpet. Puzzled they was. And he explains, and 
adds they’ve made a mistake if they think this 
man — which is me — But they interrupts to 
thank him for explainin’ hoss-wrangler, and then 
says to me : ‘ Who was this man ? ’ 

“‘Well,’ says I. ‘I told you.’ 

“ The boss advises me to be open. 

“ ‘ See here, boss,’ I says. ‘ I punch your 
cows, and you give me a square deal ; but these 
here gents comes along and gives me a guessing 
competition. Maybe I don’t guess, and if they 
can’t pow-wow plain and say what they got to 
say, well ! I got to go and wrestle yearlings 
this morning. And if I did meet a or nary 
hoss-thief on the trail ’ 

“ ‘ A hoss-thief ? ’ they interrupts. 

“ ‘ Well,’ says I, taken aback some, ‘ I 
reckon I might say it to his face if I was sure he 
sent you along here to cross-question me like 
I was a kid and you a school marm.’ 

“ They smiles at that and tumbles. 

“ ‘ Did you,’ they asks, ‘ meet any one else ? ’ 

“ ‘ Yap,’ I says. ‘ I met, in company with 
said hoss-thief, two gents, one of whom has 
punched cows with me and ridden the identical 
range for two years.’ 

“ ‘ Ah 1 ’ they says. ‘ And the other ? ’ 

“ ‘ The other,’ I says, ‘ I don’t recall ever 
seein’ him before. He was a young, fair man 


ANOTHER CONVERT 215 

with a Scottish voice ; and I leaves them 
two gents in the company of said boss -thief, 
and rides on ; and then I sees — ’ and I 
pauses, ‘ the most astounded and surprised 
object.’ 

“ ‘ Yes ? ’ they says. 

“‘I sees,’ says I, slow and ponderous, ‘on 
the following morning, where I camps, a 
badger sitting looking at me, and I hails him 
affable, it being a lonesome trail. I says to that 
badger — ’ and they interrupts some irritable, 
but smiling : 

“ ‘ Well the badger ain’t in this. Did you 
see nothing else noteworthy ? ’ 

“‘Sure,’ says I. ‘I rolls my blankets and 
hits the trail again, and then I meets up 
face to face with a — a jack-rabbit,’ I says, 
‘ clawing his long off ear in a bush, and we 
looks at each other, and that jack-rabbit — he 
hits the trail. And now I got to get to work,’ 
I says. 

“ The boss he yelps with laughter and dis- 
organises his courteous demeanour. But they 
gives me up then, and I says ‘ Adios ! ’ and 
pikes out, and curves back to the corrals. 
When I see the boss again, he tells me, to 
relieve my mind, that they discusses my case no 
more when I departs. They goes off on some 
other scent, and so I asks the boss : ‘ Could I 
get a day off ? ’ 

He looks at me curious. He was at the 
corrals himself then, sitting up beside the tally- 
man, having been down helping the wrestlers 


216 HANDS UP ! 

and got a rib moved when a two-year old 

maverick objects. 

“ ‘ Sure,’ he says, ‘ you can go. But be sure 
to come back,’ he says. ‘ Don’t go shootin’ 
up marshals and sheriffs just because they asks 
you leading questions.’ 

“‘All right, boss,’ I says. ‘Thank you. 
I ain’t no led hoss.’ 

“ ‘ What are you ? ’ he says, nursing his side. 

“ ‘ I ain’t sure,’ I responds, ‘ but if they take 
me for a maverick and tries to run a brand on 
me I’ll sure explain how I’ve been running the 
range without a brand so long that I reckon 
I’m an outlaw bull, or something like that, and 
I’m not going to be branded yet. If these 
detective gents wants to call me a hoss -thief, why 
don’t they, and get through ? ’ 

‘ But it ain’t you they wants to corral,’ 
he explains. ‘ You see, the Apache Kid has 
slipped them, and he can cover his trail ; but 
they’ve heard from the Diamond K that there 
was a kind of green partner along with him 
and they think if they got him he might be 
able to lay information ’ 

“ ‘ Well,’ I says, ‘ that’s how I sized it up ; 
so I wants a few days off.’ 

“ ‘ Go then,’ he says, ‘ and God be with you ’ ; 
and I leaves him sitting on the top rail, nursing 
his side and hollerin’, and I burns the trail — ” 
he paused, “ to look for the green partner of 
Apache Kid.” 

“ We’d better,” said I, “ join the boys. We’re 
discussing this identical business just now.” 


ANOTHER CONVERT 217 

“ You ain’t so green, stranger,” he asked 
whimsically, “as to be drinking soft drinks ? 
There ain’t nothin’ but two creeks and a spring 
between here and the Three Bars.” 

I pushed a chair for him, and the proprietor 
explained : “ Drinks are on me, Yuma ; ” and 
Yuma, with a cock-tail at his elbow, sat down, 
re-told his story, and I re-told mine for his 
benefit. He listened attentively. Then : 

“Now, mister,” he said, “you won’t object 
to a question. Your narrative is straight ; but 
it’s like as if we was playing a game and the 
candle goes out, and we has to take your word 
on the last card in the dark.” 

“ I see,” said I. “ Well, I can only give you 
my word that I read Apache Kid’s pardon — 
and it was genuine.” 

“ Then the missing card is played,” he said. 

“You only have my word on it,” I said. 

“ Same thing,” he said. “ When I sym- 
bolises this here question I had to ask, what I 
meant was that I wants to ask you if you had seen 
and read the pardon. I ain’t the kind of gent 
to misdoubt your word.” And he looked 
quite prepared to quarrel with me for the 
suggestion ! 

He quaffed the dregs of his glass. 

“Now,” he said, “I hits the waggon trail 
back to the Three Bars, and I tells the boys 
the straight goods. This here is a game between 
the Gk>vernment and the Apache Kid. I ain’t 
no friend to train-robbers but I loves a straight 
game. I ain’t an old man, but I seen a man 


218 


HANDS UP ! 

down near Nogales hanged for an erroneous 
game. And this here is an erroneous view 
of how to turn the cards.” 

The Colonel waggled a finger, and was about 
to make some comment. But we never heard 
it ; for just then a freight was screaming 
through Black Kettle, slightly drowning down 
Yuma’s voice — and next moment there was a 
yell, another yell, and Scotty’s voice came to us, 
high-pitched and nervous, and agitated, and 
excited (just like Scotty) : 

“Hi! Hi! Somebody lend a hand ! ” 

We ran out into the brilliant afternoon and 
whaled across to the depot, to see a man 
doubled up by the track-side, and Scotty 
trying to lift him, and then giving it up. He 
stood up and shouted afresh. 

We ran, ploughing through the sand. 

“ Come on, boys ! Come on ! ” shouted Scotty. 

The man on the track-side, doubled up, was 
the Apache Kid. 


CHAPTER XVIII 

THE RETURN OF APACHE 

The Apache Kid lay on a bed in the Palace 
Hotel of Black Kettle, his mouth puckered as 
if in contempt, his nose as if sneering, and his 
eyes as if he were in pain. For he was in pain. 
His left arm, and a rib, were broken. He had 
jumped from the freight -train, which was not 
stopping at Black Kettle, and these injuries 
were the result. 

“ But it was mad of you to come back,” I said. 

“Well, then, I am mad,” said he. “You 
might roll me a cigarette.” 

“I’ll get you a cigar,” said the proprietor, 
and jumped from the chair — on which he had 
been sitting wrong way round, with his arms 
on the back, assuring Apache that he was “ all 
right.” 

“No, thanks. I leave cigars to railroad 
magnates and senators. Give me a cow- 
puncher’s cigarette made out of pipe tobacco. 
You can’t call that a lady-like smoke — not like 
the things ladies smoke.” 

Scotty, who had run over to wire for Doc 
Taylor, and just now returned, offered a plug of 
blackstrap with two large bites out of it ; but I 
was rolling the desired cigarette. 

“ It seems I’m at home here,” said Apache, 
when he had inhaled and blown out a volume 
of smoke. “ Say Scotty ! Why didn’t that 
train stop here ? ” 


219 


220 


HANDS UP ! 

“You didn’t ask the conductor,” said Scotty 
grimly — and a grim smile went around ; for 
Apache Kid had arrived in Black Kettle hanging 
along one of the fore and aft brace-rods, and, 
finding that the train was going through, had 
jumped. The speed had been too quick for a 
jump, taken in that position, to be wholly 
successful. 

“ What in thunder did you come back for ? ” 
asked the old Colonel, who had helped to carry 
Apache upstairs and now stood at the foot of the 
bed, leaning on the end rail as if it were a gate. 

Apache Kid looked round the room from face 
to face. 

“ A little bit of business,” he said. 

“ Well, say ! ” said the proprietor. “ Sholly 
you can trust us ! ” 

“ Oh yes ! I beg your pardons. I express 
myself badly. The trouble is that you might 
object to my business.” He looked round 
again and then said : “ How much do you 

know ? ” 

“We know all,” replied Colonel Kemp, 
“ right down to the pardon.” 

“ Well then — damn that arm — I’ve come 
back to interview Johnson.” 

“ Johnson ! Buck Johnson ? He skipped the 
day you did.” 

“ Yes I know ; but he’s around here some- 
where. You see I’ve heard from Jake Johnson’s 
wife and she tells me,” he turned to me, “that 
Buck Johnson followed you that day. I 
thought he was painting his nose in the bar, 


THE RETURN OF APACHE 221 

and that all I had to do was to lie on the bed 
in my room. ‘ So long as he knows I’m here,’ 
thought I, ‘ he will remain in Black Kettle.’ 
I apologise to you, sir. I never thought he was 
after you ” 

The room looked mystified. The Colonel 
looked at me thoughtfully, the proprietor 
puzzled. 

“ Trail’s hot,” said Yuma Bill. 

“Thought you had told us all,” said the 
proprietor to me. 

“ You said you had told them all,” said 
Apache. 

“Oh well,” I said, “all about the pardon. 
Naturally I was not going to tell — what evidently 
I can tell now — ^about ” — I turned to the 
others — “ Apache gave me a parcel to take 
to Mrs. Jake Johnson. It was the day that the 
troopers were brought in.” 

“They made me bolt,” said Apache; 
“ fool that I was.” 

“ Oh I don’t know. We’d have had to do our 
duty,” said the Colonel, then looked to me to tell 
more. 

“ Well,” said I. ** Buck Johnson followed me. 
I had given Mrs. Johnson the parcel, she had 
opened it ” 

“ Read my letter ? ” Apache asked. 

“ Yes, and we sat down to have a pot of tea. 
Along came Johnson, and I hid in behind the 
curtain.” 

“Now,” said the proprietor, “why did you 
hide ? This here is purely a legal question.” 


222 


HANDS UP ! 

Kemp stood pulling his long beard. 

“ Because I was there on Apache’s business 
and had to be careful. I hid behind a blanket ^ 
that makes two rooms of the shack. Buck 
Johnson arrived. He was looking for me. 
There was no doubt.” 

“ Where was your hoss ? ” asked Yuma Bill. 

“ It was running down in the bottoms.” 

“ Um ! He didn’t see it and waited for you ? ” 

“ No ; he didn’t see it ; but he expected me 
to arrive. He waited and waited. I expect 
he thought I had taken the wrong trail. But 
he guessed where I had gone all right. 
Anyhow, there he was — ^waiting and waiting. 
Finally he offered to stop right there all 
night.” 

“ The hell he did ! ” said the proprietor and 
Yuma Bill in harmony. 

“He said a poor lone woman needed some 
man in the house,” I said. 

“ He would I ” said the proprietor. 

“ And what did you do then ? ” asked Yuma. 

“I pulled my gun,” I said, “and just then 
Buck Johnson spotted the money.” 

“You didn’t say anything about money,” 
said the proprietor. 

“ We all understands it was in the afore- 
mentioned passel,” said Yuma. “We follows 
this trail easy, even when it ain’t blazed or 
staked.” 

“He dived for a handful of it then,” said I, 

“ and I stepped out — ^held him up, and brought 
him back to Black Kettle.” 


THE RETURN OF APACHE 223 

“ Who catches your hoss ? ” asked Yuma. 
“ Did you go hunting together in the bottoms — 
you with your gun on him, or did you chance 
it — shaving annexed his gun previous ? Or did 
the lone woman of his agonised, unselfish 
thoughts ride herd on him for you till you gets 
the hoss ? ” 

The Colonel said drily : “ When you gets 
interrogating, Yuma, you are a whole hogger I ” 

“ Which I’m interested in this gent’s actions 
behind a gun,” explained Yuma. 

“ Mrs. Johnson got the horse,” said I ; “ and 
down we came.” 

“Well,” said Apache. “That is why I’m 
back in Black Kettle. And I think you gentle- 
men will agree that I am right to be looking for 
Buck Johnson. What happened when you 
struck Black Kettle ? ” he asked me. 

“ We struck Black Kettle over the benches 
just as a train was pulling in,” said I, “ and he 
decided to board her, so I let him.” 

“ And his horse, which he had hired from me, 
comes over,” said the Colonel. 

Apache nodded. 

“ But why did Johnson run like that ? ” 
he asked puzzled. 

“ Can’t you see,” said I, “ that he knew I 
would tell you, when we returned, all about 
his game, and that you would not stand 
for ” 

“Never thought of that,” said Apache. 
“ But you need not speak hastily to an invalid 
with a broken arm and a rib out of place when 


224 HANDS UP I 

the said man has come back to find Johnson and 
kill him for ” 

“ Hush 1 ” said the Colonel. “ This here is 
the ravings of fever. Come along, gents — come 
along — and leave Mr. Apache Kid quiet till 
the Doc arrives.’’ 

“ Ravings of fever ! I tell you I’m going to 
plug Buck Johnson ! ” cried Apache. 

The Colonel was herding all from the room. 

“ Ravings of delirium,” he said decidedly. 
“ We pays no attention to such phrases ” 

The proprietor broke in : 

“ Come along, boys ! No ! Say ! Maybe 
one of us had better keep Apache company while 
he’s light-headed this ways.” 

“ I’m not ” began Apache. 

“You stay,” said the proprietor to me, and 
the rest bundled out. 


CHAPTER XIX 

THE HURDY-GURDY 

There are those who contend that it is absurd 
to say “ Englishmen are this ” — “ Scotsmen are 
that ” — “ Irishmen are the other ” — “ Americans 
are so-and-so ” ; there are those who say that 
it is ridiculous to remark “ As for niggers I 
feel — ” whatever it may be, or “As for Irish 
Roman Catholics — ” ; similarly do some say 
that one cannot generalise about professions and 
say : “ Any teachers I ever knew were — ” ; 

but I am going to dare these persons and say 
that, of all professional men, I love medical 
practitioners best. And Doc Taylor was one of 
the finest specimens. 

He came into the room with a little bouncing 
step, laid down his bag gaily, and had already, 
with one quick blink through his pince-nez, 
seen all, I think, that was to be seen. 

“ How do you do. Doctor Taylor ? ” said 
Apache, and held out his hand. 

“ How do you do ? ” said the doctor. “ Ah I 
You are the gentleman who assisted me to patch 
Douglas when the hillside got up and hit him. 
You didn’t tell me your name then, but there’s 
no necessity in this part of the world to tell 
names, is there ? Now look at me. I’m Doc 
to ninety-nine out of a — ^um — yes — ^well, the 
arm will come first. Can’t you get the coat 
off ? Scissors — ” then came the “ zzz I ” of the 
cloth being cut. “ Beautiful night, isn’t it ? 

225 p 


226 


HANDS UP ! 

It was quite a great ride up here. I’ll be 
riding back through the dawn.” 

“You rode this time, Doc ? ” 

“ Yes — ^rode — ^pump-cars are very nice ” 

“ Ahhh ! ” 

Hurt ? Pained a bit ? I’ll be as easy as 
possible. I heard a most curious sound on the 
way up, a sound like a bell. It rang — ^then 
stopped — ^rang again — now this will be painful — 
just for a minute — don’t hit me with the free 
hand— and RANG ! ” 

“ Oh 1 1 Yes ? You were saying ? ” 

“ I forget what I was saying. That was 
painful, eh ? ” 

“ Sure ! ” 

“Yes — I was saying it rang away up above 
me, then suddenly ahead of me — ^then far 

behind. I thought I was haunted ” 

“ Um 1 ” said Apache. “ You must write 
to some scientist for the explanation. I heard it 
once when I was with some Indians on another 
dry belt. They didn’t know what it was — or 

wouldn’t tell. I found out later ” 

“ Yes ? Now that’s better. You found out ? 

This will hurt just a little ” 

“ It was— Oh 1 ” 

“ Yes. A little painful that. I’ll be as easy 
as possible. You found out ? I’m immensely 
interested in such phenomena.” 

“ It’s electricity in the air. That’s all I can 
tell you. I forget the whole explanation. The 
dryness has something to do with it. Anyhow, 
the atmosphere — Oh ! — I wondered if it was a 


THE HURDY-GURDY 227 

bell-bird. A man I met who had been on the 
Amazon told me about bell-birds. I reckon if we 

had bell-birds in — oooh ! — North America ” 

Doc Taylor bounced round and said ; “ Give 
him a glass of whisky, please.” 

When Apache Kid came round again the 
doctor was sitting on a chair looking at him 
thoughtfully. 

“ Feel better ? ” 

“ Yes, thanks. Finished ? ” 

“ Quite finished.” 

And still the Doc sat looking at Apache Kid. 
Then gently he said : 

“ By the way — I know it is supposed to help 
the sight to wear earrings — but — eh — ^well, as a 
medical man 1 would advise that you remove 
them. They are certainly very small, almost 
invisible, but, as a medical man, I would advise 
that you remove them.” 

“ Oh, are you against the ordinary theory ? 
Is it a mere superstition ? ” 

“ Well — I don’t know,” the Doc was tucking 
his belongings into his little bag. “ 1 only 
suggest their removal because they might aid in 
hurrying on a trouble in the neck and — ” he rose 
and turned to the door, “ ‘ stretching hemp,’ I 
believe it is called ; and it is an ugly end. I can 
do something with a bullet wound, but — ” his 
feet tripped down the stairs. 

“ I’ll be back day after to-morrow,” he 

called. “ Rest — rest ” 

Thus Doc Taylor joined the conspiracy. 
Suddenly, as he descended, I heard strange 


228 HANDS UP! 

sounds coming up to us. 1 could not think 
what they signified. Then “ bifi: ! ” went a 
revolver shot. 

Apache struggled to a sitting position. I laid 
my hand to my gun. There was silence below — 
not even the first strange sounds continued — 
and then back came Doc Taylor, running, with 
the proprietor at his heels. ‘ 

“ It’s all rights ” cried the Doc, crimson with 
laughter. “ It’s a man with sheep-skin chaps I 
The bar-man thought it would help you to have 
some music, and put a nickel in the hurdy- 
gurdy. The sheep-skin chaps man thought it 

would irritate an invalid, and so ” 

“So Yuma tries to stop it,” explained the 
proprietor, “ and when he couldn’t, he pulls his 
gun — and plugs it ! Got it right in the works, 
and it gave a death rattle like a large mainspring 
or a bunch of rattlers — and expires.” 

“Day after to-morrow — rest ” and the 

Doc departed again. 


CHAPTER XX 

BUCK RETURNS 

The stars looked down on Black Kettle and 
found it as quiet as on that day when I had 
struck it and thought there was nothing there 
but the railway platform. The bar-man 
snoozed with his head on a box of cigars. The 
nickel-in-the-slot hurdy gurdy, with cracked 
visage, looked ruefully on the sand-filled spit- 
toons that twinkled on the floor ; the yellow 
lamp looked sullenly out ; stars peeped under 
the eaves into the bar-room. 

A faint odour of liver and bacon augured the 
advent of supper. Just as when I struck it 
there was nothing but quiet in Black Kettle. 
Then the passenger came in. 

I looked out and saw the lit cars run round 
the foot of the bluffs, saw them slow up, heard 
the engine bell clang, heard the “ All aboard ! ” 
of the conductor, and saw the lit cars go out, 
out, out, pick up speed — ^saw the tail light twinkle 
and then go snap out round the bend ; then saw 
a shadow coming from the depot. 

“ Scotty coming over for supper,” I thought ; 
but the light still showed at the rear window 
of his room. 

The shadow drew nearer. I seemed to 
recognise it. Then the light went out in 
Scotty’s room and I saw him coming across and 
wondered, now that I saw him. that I had 
thought the first man was he. 


230 HANDS UP ! 

From the Colonel’s store came also a figure, 
bulky in the dim light — Yuma Bill. Yuma 
Bill waddled in his sheep-skin “ chaps ” to the 
verandah, arriving there about level with the 
man who preceded Scotty from the dep6t. I 
looked from Yuma Bill to — Buck Johnson ! 

The light from the hotel door was on them, 
so Johnson doubtless did not notice me sitting 
by the side of the door, outside. I fancy he 
did not, for neither did Yuma Bill. Yuma 
strolled in easily after him ; and 1, as soon 
as the sound of the heels had passed heavily 
indoors, made a bee line for the Colonel’s 
store. 

“ Hullo ! ” he said. “ I’ve been waiting for 
you. I want to suggest something to you.” 

“ Yes ? ” 

“ I want to suggest that you gets out of town 
back to your outfit and tells the boys, where you 
are now, all the story you’ve told us here in 
Black Kettle. And you should write to Maxim, 
the owner of the Diamond K — who is a white 
man — a full account of how you happened to 
have two names ” 

“ And about Apache and the troopers ? ” I 
asked, wondering what he was after. 

“ No, no. Just an account of how you came 
to have two names and saying you feels it laid 
upon you to let him know you ain’t no criminal, 
seeing how you worked for him, and seeing how 
the papers are telling that he employed a tough. 
You give him permission to publish your letter 
in the press.” 


BUCK RETURNS 231 

“ Um ! It’s a good idea. What’s your whole 
mind, Colonel ? Have you something behind ? 
Is this an end in itself ? ” 

“ Oh well,” said the Colonel, “ I don’t know. 
The owner of the Diamond K is liable then to 
fire his foreman for making unpleasant stories 
about his outfit. There’s something in me 
would rejoice over that. You see, in the old 
days, you would have gone right over and shot 
that coyote for his clever story.” 

“Oh! I see.” 

“ Well — if he wants to do you an injury and 
make a name for himself as clever, this idea of 
you sending the owner an explanation — as you 
feels called upon, says you — ^will square that 
anyhow. The firing of him is an after-thought, 
I guess. It’s your health is the main idea.” 

“ Oh ! I’ll leave it,” said I. “I don’t 
think I care very much for opinion.” Indeed I 
had other thoughts at the moment — ^thoughts 
not of myself. 

The Colonel stroked his beard. 

“ Well,” said he. “I got to be straight with 
you. Yuma Bill tells me he is so angry about 
the foreman of the Diamond K having put the 
’tecs on to him, for what they calls cumulative 
evidence, that he reckons, now that he’s told 
you what they wanted to know about you 
further than the Diamond K foreman had to tell 
’em — ^well, he hankers some to go up and kill 
that coyote. I advises not ; for, if he does, I, 
as the mayor of Black Kettle, has to see he’s 
arrested and hand him over to the marshal at 


232 


HANDS UP ! 

Lone Tree. So I suggested to Yuma Bill this 
more civilised way of doing.” Suddenly he 
scanned me more intently. 

“ You got something to tell me and you’ve 
been waiting to swing your rope,” he hazarded. 

“ I have,” said I. “ Do you know who came 
off the train just now ? ” 

“ Who ? ” 

“ Buck Johnson.” 

“Eh? Oh! You’re sure?” 

“ Quite positive. I’ve looked at him keenly 
enough along a gun, you know . I don’t forget.” 

“ Say 1 ” the Colonel snatched his hat from the 
counter. “We’ll go over and eat supper.” 

So the Colonel shut the store and we went 
over — ^to eat supper. 

“ I reckon Buck has heard that Apache left 
Black Kettle, and so he comes back. I reckon 
he has seen the papers about you, too, and he 
comes along to watch progress and give some 
more evidence if the ’tec gents come cavortin’ 
in to Black Kettle for more news. I wonder 
if you should show yourself ? When do you hit 
the road back to the Triangle ? ” 

“ Sun-up.” said I. 

“ Um ! There’s liable to be trouble if you 
and Johnson meets.” 

“Not in Black Kettle,” I said. “He’s not 
going to make trouble here.” 

“This needs thinking out,” he said shaldng 
his head once, slowly. “ Say, I think you’d 
better be invisible till w^e gets Buck Johnson to 
talk. His return to Black Kettle changes things 


BUCK RETURNS 233 

a heap. You go and keep Apache company till 
we reports to you.” 

“ Perhaps it might be better,” said I ; and 
the Colonel, finding that Johnson had gone into 
the supper room, signed to me anon that the 
way was clear. Up I went in the darkness and 
entered Apache’s room. I could hear his deep 
breathing, and as I drew near he stirred. I 
struck a match. 

“ Oh it’s you,” he said, and his hand came out 
from among the propping pillows. 

I lit the lamp and sat down. 

“ Had supper ? ” he asked. 

“ No,” I said. “ I thought I would have it 
up here with you. Just came up to see if you 
were awake.” 

“ Awake and thinking,” he said. “ By God ! 
You’re very good to me. All the boys are very 
good to me. I think Black Kettle is the only 
place in the world that isn’t hostile to me. 
Roll me a cigarette.” 

I rolled it and gave it to him to wet, and held 
a match for him. 

“ Give me the match,” he said, angrily. “ I 
never let any man dance attendance on me like 
that. No, sir — not a waiter even should ever 
hold a match to a man’s cigar. Let him light 
the match — ^that’s attentive — and waiters are 
paid for that. But never let him hold it while 
you light. The trouble is that waiters are 
either plumb inattentive, and throw the matches 
at you, or else they want to make menials of 
themselves. No wonder God repented Him that 


234 


HANDS UP ! 

He had made man. I saw a kid once larruped 
by its mother and then it ran to her and hid its 
head in her lap to be comforted ! I saw that on 
the night I held up the Transcontinental at 
Three Creeks — ^that’s four years ago — and, by 
heck, it helped me to hold them up good ! 
‘ That’s life,’ I said. ‘ That’s what we’re here for 
— ^get it in the eye and then get comforted by 
what gave you it in the eye. Be driven to 
drink by the discords of church bells and then 
have your soul saved by a parson. Not in 
mine, thanks ! I wish Buck Johnson would 
think of dropping in at Black Kettle again. 
I feel myself wanting to kill him.” He 
shot me a sharp look. “ He’s just the kind 
of man to come back, too,” he snapped. “ He’ll 
hear I’ve gone — ^the papers have got that ; 
and back he’ll come to be on hand in case any 
lies are wanted in addition to the truths that 
I’m up against. It would give me great 
delight to hear that he was back. I’d slip 
down to plug him right here. And then I 
think I’d plug myself. I’m all in. I’ve had 
enough . I have no use for a broken arm. Alias . ’ ’ 

I thought it was as well that he did not know 
that the foreman of the Diamond K had made 
a pretty story, lugging me into his trouble. 
It was because of the way Johnson had treated 
me that Apache had come back — looking for 
Johnson, to kill him for having followed me. 
He felt badly about that. He would feel 
badly about the evidence of the Diamond K 
foreman. Earlier in the day he had said : 


BUCK RETURNS 235 

“ No ! I will never get over that son of a 
wolf following you. I’d never have asked you 
to go up there for me if I had thought he would 
do that ! ” 

If he heard of the Diamond K foreman he 
would get up now, broken arm and all, and ride 
up to interview him, even more furious than 
Yuma Bill. But what I said now was : 

“ Well, if Johnson did come back you would 
repay the boys here very poorly by going down 
and shooting him up. You know — ^right down 
to Doc Taylor — ^who isn’t a resident here at all — 
they all want to give you a show. It would 
make them feel tired if you ” 

“Yes, I guess it would. Let me see — is this 
fair ? ” He struggled up to a sitting position. 
“ Let me see. There’s one thing a man must be 
careful about — and that is letting sentiment 
hold him down. I’ve seen many a good man 
held down the way Coriolanus was held down — 
you remember.” 

I stared at him. 

“ Well ! ” he cried. “ Don’t stare ! I’ve got 
a memory. I don’t forget Coriolanus, though 
it’s twenty years since I read it. I’ve seen it in 
lesser ways than the way Shakespeare dished it 
up. But life’s plumb full of it. Some man gets 
on to a big idea and starts following it, and 
along comes somebody and says : ‘ Don’t 

make your head ache ! ’ Or you get it with the 
bell that drives men to drink in cities, kicking 
up its self-righteous row, and if you swear at it 
the parson says you’re a bad one. No — 


236 


HANDS UP I 

perhaps it would be better after all — for the 
world in general — for me to kill Johnson ; 
and maybe it’s a mistake to hold myself down 
by saying : ‘ The boys at Black Kettle have 
been very good to you, Apache. They don’t 
want you to get into any more trouble for a 
spell — ^take care of your arm, Apache ! Take 
care of your rib, Apache ! ’ Of course they 
mean well. I know they mean well ! It’s 
sweet of them, but — Oh for God’s sake let me 
think. Put out that light and let me see the 
stars.” 

I lowered and blew out the light. I could 
hear him breathing very deeply. 

Then suddenly he said : “ Say ! ” 

“ Well ? ” said I. 

“ Did anybody get off the train to-night ? ” 

Dead silence. 

“ It’s all right,” he said. “ I generally think 
a heck of a lot about a man when he’s coming 
near. Would you be so good as to light the 
lamp again ? ” 

I lit the lamp. 

“ Buck Johnson is below,” he said definitely. 

I sat down on the end of the bed and smiled. 
I could see that he was, for him, pale, and that 
there was a burning red spot on either cheek 
bone. 

“ Well,” said I, “ it’s a free world.” 

“ It’s all right,” he said again. “ Funny ! 
I’ve been lying here thinking about a man with a 
stammer. He was in an outfit that I worked 
for once. I had a heck of a row with a man. 


BUCK RETURNS 237 

I was sitting meditating how to put a quarrel 
on him in such a way that he would pull his gun 
on me. That was in 1888 — and if a man pulled 
a gun on you in a cow-camp in 1888 , and you 
shot him, they just said ‘ self-defence.’ And as 
I was sitting meditating I heard the fellow say ; 
‘ Ca-ca-ca-can any of you boys te-te-te-tell me 
how to sp-p-p-p-pell remuda ? ’ I don’t know 
what it is. Alias ; maybe it’s weakness — well, 
if it is I’m weak — but it was so blamed 
pathetic, that voice, that we all spelt it for him 
with a kind of a choke. There’s no doubt men 
are queer beasts. And after I heard that 
stammer I thought : ‘ Oh to hell w ith the man 
I wanted to kill ! I guess he’s built that way — 
to hell wdth him.’ Then there was once in 
Cheyenne : I had left my grip in a boarding- 
house in Denver and my partner there ran up to 
the boarding-house to see a man whom we had 
got half friendly with, and he found another 
man, who lived in the place, with my grip open, 
reading some letters of mine. My partner 
wrote to me about it, saying he had carried the 
grip olffi and was forwarding it to me by the 
Express Company. Also he said in his letter : 

‘ I tell you about this — but don’t let him know 
I told you. Don’t write about it. He would 
know that I had told you, as I was alone when I 
saw him.’ Well — I thought to myself : ‘ Why 
can’t my partner write : “ Tell him I told you,” 
Why is he scared ? To Hades wdth him ! ’ And I 
wrote a note to the man who had opened my 
valise : ‘ You son of a , I am working just 


238 HANDS UP! 

now up Cheyenne way ; but when I get through 
I’m coming to plug you.’ There wasn’t much 
consideration for my partner’s request — I knew 
that — although I told myself that I gave no 
reason. Well — I decided that even to write 
that letter wasn’t white to my partner in 
Cheyenne, so I tore it up. But it kept biting, 
biting, biting me — ^that skunk with the buck 
teeth opening my grip ; and I quit the job I had 
and took train to Cheyenne.” He shook his 
head — I saw the red spots burn on his cheeks. 
“ I got on that train and somewhere about 
Laramie a cripple got into the car. He was 
the cheeriest cripple I ever struck. He hauled 
himself about on crutches and talked and joked, 
and I studied him. Once, when an empty cup 
he held fell to the floor and he stooped for it, 
the train took a curve and landed him over on 
my chest, and he said : ‘ I beg your pardon, sir, 
and God-damn my God-damned leg,’ and I 
shoved him to his seat again and picked up his 
tin cup for him, and we sat and yarned till we 
came to Denver, and something about that 
cheerful cripple made me quite different. ‘ Oh 
confound the buck-toothed fellow that read 
my letters,’ I said, and I took the next train 
back. I was surely going to kill him, and you 
know me well enough to know that it wasn’t a 
scare that sent me back. You can’t go and 
kill a man when there are cripples going around, 
laughing, and smoking cigars, and God-damning 
their legs in that way. It takes all the hatred 
out of one. There you are — ^things like that 


BUCK RETURNS 239 

come in and hit me, I guessed Buck Johnson 
was below and yet these stars made me say : 
‘ Oh, confound him. He’ll be dead, and I’ll be 
dead in a few years.’ Seeing you are all so 
solicitous about me I shan’t go down and shoot 
him — not in Black Kettle. But,” he sat up 
again. “ By heck ! sentiment doesn’t get him 
off if ever he and I meet outside Black Kettle. 
If it was some dirty trick he’d played on me 
personally, some bit of sentiment might get him 
off. But he followed you up that day to Jake 
Johnson’s ranch. It’s a trick I don’t forgive. 
And he pretended to Mrs. Johnson that he was 
anxious about her, and then tried to get the 
dough she had. No, sir. I’m going to have a 
sleep now, for I feel light-headed — ^and I’m not 
going to kill him in Black Kettle. But I’m 
going to kill Buck Johnson some day — I know 
it — I’m quite sure of it. It’s not because I’ve 
made up my mind to it. It’s because, looking 
calmly on at it all, I can see Destiny means me 
to kill that son of a coyote. Say, I must try 
to sleep. Oh ! Say ! — no — no, you’ll be all 
right. Buck Johnson won’t try anything on 
you — no, not in Black Kettle.” 


CHAPTER XXI 

SET A THIEF — 

Next day I drove back to the Triangle, with a 
jag of supplies on the waggon. 

In a novel I would have stayed at Black 
Kettle, and news of Apache Kid’s presence there 
reaching Lone Tree, the marshal would have 
come curving into town with a posse at his 
heels — and there would have been a frightful 
scrap on the stairs. There was a scrap later 
on, tough enough for a novel ; but for the 
moment things did not happen so swift. You 
remember in Stevenson’s “ Wrecker ” how 
Captain Nares says : “ Dime novels are right 
enough. Nothing’s wrong with the dime novel, 
only things happen quicker than they do in life.” 
This being my plain unvarnished life during 
the stormy days of Apache Kid, I, as I say, 
went back to the Triangle. 

I pulled my freight out of Black Kettle at sun- 
up, before the haze had lifted, thinking a good 
deal about Apache Kid and wishing him well. 
Johnson had not, of course, got up so early, so 
I did not see him. The spirit that tends to give 
a man a “ show ” in the West goes in harness with 
the spirit of taking care of oneself. Apache was 
to have “ a show ” ; but he was not to interfere 
with the earning of my forty dollars a month, 
lest I might end either as one of the fraternity 
that had the famous N.Y.Y.T. of Pete’s yarn, for 
laureate, or as one of those whose Bible is “ The 

240 


241 


SET A THIEF— 

Life and Adventures of the James Brothers ” — 
another Apache Kid ; and I fear I would not be 
so polished and “ white ” a hold-up man. 
Yuma Bill also went home to his outfit — ^the 
Three Bars, a two-day ride (or a three-day 
waggon trip) in the opposite direction. 

“ You write that letter,” said Yuma as we 
drank our coffee by lamplight ; the proprietor, 
with deranged hair and sleepy eyes, fussing us 
our breakfast. “ There’s going to be trouble ; 
and the owner of the Diamond K is a quiet man, 
but he sure has influence.” 

“ Don’t shoot his foreman if you meet him,” 
said I. 

“ That’s all right,” said Yuma, hitching his 
“ chaps.” “ This here is a law-abiding country ; 
and I ain’t going to commit no murder.” 

The round-ups had broken me into early 
rising, so I did not think myself a marvel as I 
drove easily through the first of the day, saw 
the dew on the sage-bushes, opal mists rise in 
the sunlight, and broad, quiet day illumine the 
vastness. 

I had little to say on my return. I could see 
that, despite the friendliness of the boys here, 
silence was indeed golden. I had told them 
enough already, and if trouble came to me they 
would “ stay with me.” Any more that I 
might have to tell concerned Apache — not me ; 
so, as I say, silence was the card. 

My first job, on return, was to ride over to a 
neighbouring round-up, where a herd of Triangle 
steers had been cut by our representative, 

Q 


242 


HANDS UP ! 

and help to drive them home. They were to be 
brought clear to the home ranch, to be branded 
there. 

That was close on a week’s job and, in the 
meanwhile, news — if not of Apache Kid, then of 
his enemy, Buck Johnson — was forthcoming. 

A bunch of beeves had gone to Black Kettle 
and the roadmen who drove it over came back 
late at night, the night of our return with the 
strays, and broke up a discussion on the relative 
merits of single and double cinches by telling us 
that the county sheriff was hunting some 
cattle-rustlers. 

A ranch owner in Sonora county, next door, 
had been suspect for some time. He seemed to 
have an astonishing number of calves in his 
herds ; and at the round-ups, by prior arrange- 
ments, a neighbouring herd had been driven 
(ostensibly by accident, but really by deliberate 
intention) into his main herd. The Sheriff had 
been on the spot to keep the peace, by special 
request of the other ranchers, who expected 
trouble. And he had been required. If he had 
not been on hand there might have been some 
more swift deaths for the sake of a brand. 

The owner in question had been suspect for 
long — ^and the result of that intentional stampede 
was to unite several mothers and calves — and 
two of the calves bore the brand, newly affixed, 
of the suspected person, w^hile the mothers bore 
other brands, brands of neighbouring ranches. 

The owner was in gaol, and some of the cattle 
which bore even his own brand, were already 


SET A THIEF— 243 

appropriated by the Sheriff ; anon we would 
hear if further suspicions were proved — sus- 
picions that he not only lifted mavericks but 
faked brands. The steers would be killed, 
their hides stretched, the branded part cut 
out and left to soak. If there were previous 
brands they would then show up, and inquiries 
would be made to see if the owner in question 
had ever bought any cattle from the holders of 
these other brands. 

All this had given a scare to three men in 
Sonora County and one in Black Kettle. The 
one in Black Kettle who was scared by the news 
was Buck Johnson. A wire had come for him, so 
Scotty said, which read simply : “ Wanted 

urgently at home.” Johnson had taken train 
for Sonora, saying to Scotty that he feared his 
wife was ill, but the conductor had let out that 
he took a fare for Placer and got off there. 
And thence he had “ lit out ” into the hills 
with three men who met him there. 

I was glad to know, whatever the cause of 
Johnson’s departure, that he had left Black 
Kettle. Apache Kid could not rest in bed all 
the time of his stay. But I asked our men 
nothing of Apache, and they said no word 
of him. 

Suddenly the door opened and Mr. Henry, 
the Triangle owner, entered. It was the first 
time I had seen him in the bunk-house. 

“ I say, boys,” he said, “ I’ve just had a wire 
from the Sheriff. He’s after some cattle- 
rustlers. He has already got the king-bolt but 


244 HANDS UP ! 

he wants to round up the whole outfit. I 
gather they have a fair jag of charges against 
them. They’ve headed for the Hole in the 
Wall country, and he wants a posse. He’s 
jumping off from Black Kettle. He’s getting 
men from various outfits to make his posse. 
He’s advised the Circle Z and got one man 
promised ; the Three Bars, too, have already 
promised him a man — and now he asks for two 
from this outfit.” 

There had been grunts of indignation at the 
gall ” of that Sheriff, going elsewhere first ; 
but the request for two men instead of one, 
from this ranch, mollified somewhat. Every- 
body shouted at once, but Cy Carter, the fore- 
man, coming in after the owner, held up his hand. 

“ Say, Mr. Henry,” he said, “ seeing every one 
is so eager, I reckon we’d better make a lottery 
of it ” ; and so a lottery we made of it. There 
were twenty of us, Cy and the owner included, 
and twenty slips of paper went into a sack —two 
of the slips marked with a cross ; and then we 
each drew, and held our papers till all had 
drawn. Then we unfolded the slips. 

Pete gave a yell and rushed out for a horse. 

I put my paper back in my pocket and followed 
him. 

“ Pete’s got one. Who’s got the other ? ” I 
heard. 

“ Say — has Pete got it, or is he bluffing ? ” 

“ Who’s got the aces ? ” 

“ Say, boss — don’t they want no more than 
two ? ” 


245 


SET A THIEF— 

But Pete and I were saddling. 

The owner came over to me. 

“ Say,” he said. “ They tell me you are new 
on the range. You can ride all right I know, 
but there may be some gun-play ahead of you.” 

Pete, head under his pony, drawing the cinch, 
blew my trumpet for me — and his own. 

“ I taught him, boss — I was his professor,” he 
said, “and I certify,” he withdrew his head, 
“ upon him for an expert gun-man.” 

All this was just before supper but there was 
no waiting for us. We hit the trail at once 
(with some grub that the boss rustled for us) and 
camped half way. I remember Pete’s phrase as 
we sat by our fire there. “ A hoss, a blanket, and 
a hobble is enough house-furnishings for any 
man in this here brief life.” He did not often 
say things like that, but when he did he felt 
what he said, and it was, I think, the capacity 
to feel thus that made Pete and me such friends. 

The next day was but a quarter gone when 
we came whooping into Black Kettle, setting a- 
dancing several restive ponies, some at the 
hitching-posts, some at the hotel verandah, two 
before the store. No sooner had we arrived 
than we saw the Colonel running to us, and we 
rode toward him. 

“ How do, boys ? ” he saluted us. “ You 
come to join the posse ? ” 

“ Sure 1 ” 

“Well, boys,” he said, “you want to be 
posted on this here side-issue regarding that 
picnic — prompt. The Sheriff of Sonora wanted 


246 


HANDS UP ! 


a man who knew the Hole in the Wall country. 
Apache Kid heard of all the ongoings, and he 
would have it that he was the man to show the 
way. No reasoning with him ” 

“ Gee-whiz ! But the Sheriff will recognise 
him,’’ said Pete. 

“ He says the Sheriff and him never met.” 

“That don’t signify,” said Pete. “Ain’t his 
description out ? And them little ear-rings he 
wears — it’s the only thing I don’t like in him — 
makes him some reminiscent of a Greaser — 
they’ll ” 

“He’s taken them off, and he’s grown a 
beard. His yarn is that he got hurt in the 
corrals with a locoed bull but is now healed 
sufficient to lead the posse ” 

A man w ith a chubby face, but scowling face 
too, sitting his pony with very military seat, 
rode up to us and swept back a buckskin coat he 
wore so that a little badge show^ed, with a flash, 
on his left breast. 

“ You boys for the posse ? ” he asked, reining 
up. 

“ Yes, Sheriff,” said Pete. 

“ Where you from ? ” 

“ Triangle. Henry and Stells.” 

“ Well I reckon we’re about ready.” 

“ You got a guide ? ” asked Pete. 

“ Yes ; I got a tracker from Lincoln Reserve, 
and I got a man called Charlie Carryl who 
knows the Hole in the Wall country.” 

“ Oh ! He got his arm broke with a locoed 
steer in the round-ups, didn’t he ? ” asked Pete. 


24T 


SET A THIEF— 

“ Yes, that’s the man. There he is on the 
verandah right now.” And “Charlie Carryl” 
appeared with his left arm in a sling. Beside 
him was the Indian tracker. 

The Indian amazed me. He wore a starched 
shirt. Don’t jump on me and say I should call 
it “ boiled shirt. 

If the West called such an article a “ glitter- 
shirt ” I might use the phrase. They were great 
starchers on the Lincoln Reserve. The mission 
laundry had taught one art which appealed to 
them strongly ; the glamour of the stiff, starched 
front of a white shirt was over the whole 
Reserve. So the Indian tracker came forth to 
trail the horse-thieves with a starched shirt 
showing below his broidered deer-skin coat, and 
waistcoat — an ordinary cloth waistcoat, store 
bought, and sewn all over with bead designs after 
the style of the swastika. 

We rode over to the “ Palace ” at the Sheriff’s 
heels. I was quite prepared not to “ know ” 
Apache Kid and made a mask of my face. 

“ How do, Charlie ! ” said Pete, looking up 
at the Apache Kid who watched us ride along. 
“ Your arm better ? ” 

“ On the mend,” said Apache. 

Yuma Bill swaggered out of the bar. I 
wondered if the boys at his place had resorted 
to the “ lottery ” method of picking who was to 
join the posse, or whether he had intimidated his 
outfit into being its representative. 

One thing was clear. The thought flashed 
into my head at sight of that rough diamond, 


248 


HANDS UP ! 

Yuma Bill. It came into his head at the same 
moment. It came also into Pete’s. It flickered 
from eye to eye. Yuma twinkled it rapidly ; 
he could not help it when he saw us. Pete 
turned his head, fastening the slackened strap 
over his blanket roll, and telegraphed a quick 
look to me. 

If there had been any fear of the Sheriff 
finding that he had indeed set a thief to catch 
a thief when Apache Kid (for the nonce “ Charlie 
Carry 1 ”) became his guide, if there were any 
chance of the Sheriff finding that out, and think- 
ing of his duty, there were at least three men in 
the posse who might have objections to its 
performance. 


CHAPTER XXII 


AT THE HOLE IN THE WALL 

I UNDERSTAND how it is that soldiers are re- 
ticent about the battles in which they have 
fought. As for the actual shooting of their 
enemies (that is, their countries’) they are as 
mum as if they were all Freemasons. 

The affair at the Hole in the Wall was a small 
matter compared with wars, but on those who 
went in for it it had the same effect. 

Though I have said little about how it affected 
me, the shooting of the trooper at the hollow 
tree is a matter that I many a time wish I had 
been spared. Put me in the position again, 
show me the treachery on that hill-slope, and 
of course I would chip in again. But I would 
do it mighty seriously, knowing that all my 
life that trooper would have to lie spread- 
eagled as it were in a lumber-room of my mind. 
For my part, if I had to shoot somebody, I had 
far rather shoot a trust-boss than a cattle-thief ! 

We did not pull out of Black Kettle till two 
days after Pete and I arrived there, for two men 
were expected from a ranch away up on the 
Kettle River. The men comprising the posse 
were all taken from ranches that had suffered 
from the gang in question. That lull of a day 
or two, before starting out, was not good. It 
gave me time to think. I recalled again the 
incident of the hollow tree. I remembered how, 

after the heat of fight, I wished I had been 
249 


250 HANDS UP 1 

spared taking part in the shambles side of life. 
I sat staring ahead of me in the Palace bar-room, 
while the voices swam away ; but a hail of : 
“ Belly up to the bar, boys ! ” recalled me and, 
replying to that hail, I returned to the frame 
of mind in which I could say to myself : “ Don’t 
you weaken now ! If everybody weakened like 
you a registered brand would be valueless and 
the world a thieves’ paradise.” 

Many a wild tale was swopped, during these 
days, of bad men and their doings. Stories 
were told of the Lincoln County War, of the 
James brothers, of the Dalton gang ; of some 
man up Idaho way who was marshal, or 
sheriff, or peace officer of some kind, and how 
it was discovered one day that he was really boss 
of a gang of hold-up men, with representatives 
at the stage stations. He would chalk-mark a 
coach in a way his men would understand, and 
when it came rocking into some station one 
of his men would see the mark and boot along 
and tell his fellows and, on the next lap, the 
stage would be held up. 

When it all came out the chief of that gang 
had a rough trail indeed, a kind of imitation, to 
the best of the ability of the miners who 
rounded him up, of the real thing. He was 
condemned to death, made a horrible scene 
protesting he was too bad to die, then, giving 
up all hope, asked for a strong drop that would 
ensure instantaneous death. He had been a 
tough character, well known as a killer, but 
always managing to get his enemies to pull 


AT THE HOLE IN THE WALL 251 

their guns first and so, in the slang phrase, be 
found guilty only of taking part in “an even 
break ” — but the number of men he had killed 
thus in “ self-defence ” was not small. When 
a peace officer was wanted he got the job, as I 
say, as a man quick on the draw — which a 
peace-officer must be. But “using his position 
erroneous,” as the narrator expressed it, he was 
brought to book. 

Happier was the tale I heard of a peace- 
officer in New Mexico who ran to earth a man 
wanted across the line in Texas, walked into his 
house and held him up where he stood, washing 
dishes ! But the wanted man would not throw 
up his hands — and the peace-officer did not 
desire to shoot him. They had a rough and 
tumble. Then the wanted man leaped through 
the window, but not to escape. He only went 
out by the window instead of the door because 
the peace-officer blocked the door that gave 
on to the passage-way. The “ bad man ” 
simply plunged out by the window and then 
dived back indoors, and doubled upstairs for 
his rifle. The marshal, running out of the 
kitchen, called to him to surrender, but he had 
already reached the stairs and he rushed on 
upwards. The marshal ran after him ; but, in 
the marshal’s words (as heard, when he told 
the story, by Panamint Pete) ; “ My deputy was 
a Mexican — all I could rope in at the time to help 

— and he had no convictions of sentiment in 
such doings ; so he just naturally runs in — from 
where I posts him outside — and bends a gun. 


252 


HANDS UP ! 

and shoots that man that I was aiming to take 
back intact to Texas.” That marshal was a 
good man. 

The members of this parcel of cattle-stealers 
that we were going to find were all known as 
“ bad men.” For one Apache Kid you have 
fifty merely brutal murderers. To-day the 
“ bad man ” type is to be found chiefly in cities. 
He is practically eliminated from the ranges, 
and from the parts still left wilderness. But 
even in the time of my narrative, a decade ago, 
the “ bad men ” in the Western States, from 
Montana to Mexico, were as much drawn from 
cities as from the frontier towns. Even earlier 
the city -bred “ bad men ” were abroad. They 
came to mining camps chiefly, card-players 
perhaps, and graduated by shooting some 
drunken player. Had they stayed in town they 
would have been hooligans, after the pattern 
of the fellow who was the cause of my flight 
from the old country — or even less worthy, 
perhaps. 

But the men that we were after were not 
“boot -black toughs,” as the West calls such 
characters who have graduated through picking 
pockets, knuckle -dusting — in groups — late hom- 
ing merchants in alleys, breaking open freight 
cars, to shooting clerk and teller in some small 
mining camp. They were of the old order that 
hangs on in the West here and there. 

We had word of them from a ranch three days 
after we left Black Kettle ; and they seemed, 
according to the account of the man who had 


AT THE HOLE IN THE WALL 253 

seen them, to be still heading for that tangle 
of mountains called the Hole in the Wall — a 
name given to more than one such natural 
hiding-place. I saw, only the other day, that 
a party of horse-thieves were standing off a 
posse in a “ Hole in the Wall ” in Wyoming, and 
making old settlers feel as if the old days were not 
dead, but unhappily revived. “ The old days ” 

make exciting reading sometimes, but 

At a ranch on the headwaters of Horse Thief 
Creek (which might well be re-named now, as 
the horse-thief in question passed in his checks 
to Peter there these eighteen years ago) we had 
word of them again. They had a good start of 
us ; but they knew they were to be followed. 
They knew that, with the arrest of their chief 
“ fence ” (which is the straight word for the 
ranch-owner who was negotiating the sales of 
their mavericked animals), their game was up. 
When the men who are doing the work on the field 
are corralled first, the “ mandarins ” (they who 
are managing the business side) can prepare to 
look innocent and set about destroying proofs 
of complicity and preparing alibis. They need 
not take flight ; if they have a big pull the men 
who are doing the dirty work may pay the 
penalty alone. Even if the captured “un- 
derlings ” blab, the “ mandarins ” may get off, 
and not only get off, but raise a clamour of cries 
of “ Shame ! ” that they were ever suspected. 
But when the “ mandarin ” is corralled then 
those who play his cards for him had better 
seek new pastures. 


254 HANDS UP ! 

So had these men argued — and, instead of 
leaving the State on the instant, separating, 
taking flight for Mexico, or farther, as many 
men in trouble in the Western States have done, 
they headed for the Hole in the Wall. Perhaps 
their idea was to lie there until the storm might 
blow over. Perhaps their idea was to send out 
some member thence to a settlement, to find 
out how deeply they were implicated. Perhaps 
— but it matters little now what their design was, 
or whether an element of panic influenced them. 

We left the ranch where we received last news 
of them, and struck their trail where a cowboy 
had seen them. At that ranch we were all 
supplied with fresh horses and went on eagerly, 
now on the actual trail. Eight days after 
leaving Black Kettle we camped at the spring 
that is the beginning of Horse Thief Creek. 
Away beyond, a steep triangle, a V of dense 
brush fills the valley’s end ; to left are cliffs 
striped with strange belts of colours ; to right 
are “ bad lands ” running up into turrets and 
bastions that stand melancholy and weird 
against the last light of day. 

It was a gloomy and silencing place. We 
made a camp there by the little spring, where 
water-spiders walked on the water and scuttled 
from the dipping-cans. That night we lit no 
fire ; for Apache said that if we lit one it would 
be seen on the cliffs ahead. I remember how 
the Sheriff looked at him and said : 

“ Shouldn’t we spread out lest they try to 
break back ? ” 


AT THE HOLE IN THE WALL 255 

“ They’ll not break back. They’ll go farther 
in,” said Apache. 

“ You know these parts very well ? ” the 
Sheriff suggested. 

“ I prospected clean through here once,” said 
Apache. “That’s not a wall up there — ^that’s 
a pass all right. They’re in that black bit — 
woods.” 

“ You’ve done other work, then, beside riding 
the range,” said the Sheriff. 

“ Sure ! ” said Apache, looking at the Sheriff 
quickly, and then looking away as if these 
questions held no menace for him, and he began 
to hum the air of “ The Spanish Cavalier ” ; he 
sang lightly, and smiled at the Sheriff as he sang, 
posing gaily, as if he held a guitar on his crossed 
knees, and as he did so the Sheriff smiled back. 
We who were in the know about this ex- 
prospector cow-man, Charlie Carryl, could not 
look at each other. Men get too amazingly 
alert to read every sign, when thrown together 
in places as solitary as these. 

The scene was laid for tapping thought- 
waves — silence and bad-land sky-lines, and no 
fire — just staring full moon flooding the valley 
and we and the horses clustered in the trees that 
grow around that spring. 

Too often I see again those black, horrible, 
quiet pines in that valley’s end to which we 
came before sun-up, for Apache advised that 
the crossing of the valley’s end be undertaken 
at night. We rested only from about six (when 
we came to the spring) till midnight. Then on 


256 HANDS UP ! 

again. And by four a.m. we were in the border 
of the timber. 

It appeared at first, that if the cattle-lifters 
had left a watch at that part to keep an eye 
on the valley for pursuit, that rear-guard had 
not seen us. But we did not know for certain. 
He might have been there, might have seen us, 
indistinctly, crossing the flats, and already 
ridden on after his cronies to warn them. 
But Apache thought that either that probable 
rear-guard had not seen us, or else they had all 
pushed clear through. For once Apache was 
wrong. Neither of these methods (which would 
doubtless have seemed the only two to choose 
between had he been of the flying party) had 
been adopted by them. 

“ There is a place right here,” he said, “ where 
they could work a ‘ stand off ’ — but farther on 
there is a better one.” 

“ How far is the better place for them ? ” 
asked the Sheriff. 

“It’s a good couple of days through these 
hills. But I have a feeling that this would 
satisfy them ; and if you are willing. Sheriff, 
I would suggest that we leave the horses and 
prospect into the first place.” 

So we passed on, leaving a guard with the 
horses, crept away through fading, gloomy 
alleys between the boles, feeling the queer 
quiet of the place. After an hour of this 
creeping advance a flicker of light showed on a 
tree, and we halted. So they had not left a 
rear-guard ! 


AT THE HOLE IN THE WALL 257 

“ They’re there,” said Apache, in the dip. 
Now, Sheriff, you get ready for action.” 

“We hold them up, boys, you remember 
that,” said the Sheriff. “ You just back my 
play.” 

“ Right I ” 

“ Right, Sheriff ! ” 

We crept on. 

Crack went a rotten branch on which some one 
had set his foot — a crack that seemed to re- 
verberate from the whole dip into which we 
advanced toward the flickering light. And 
immediately came a rushing of feet and the 
extinguishment of the Are. We heard water 
flung and wood sizzle. Then the Sheriff’s 
voice : 

“ We’re too many for you. Give it up ! ” 

Then crack ! crack ! crack ! of Winchesters — 
Biff ! biff ! of revolvers. 

It was just faint morning light. I fired no 
shot. Several spent no shell. For this was no 
moving -picture hold-up of cattle-rustlers, and 
none of us were out to shoot our own men (the 
way Wild Bill shot his deputy in Abilene — 
an accident easily understandable, but a thing 
that must have given Wild Bill many a moment 
of remorse). 

The Sheriff kept shouting : “ Give it up ! 
Surrender ! Throw up your hands 1 ” 

But there was no surrender on the part of 
these rustlers. Their horses, scared by the 
shooting, were stampeding through the brush. 
I thought at first sound of the horses that the 

B 


258 HANDS UP ! 

cattle-rustlers were trying to escape. But they 
were not doing that. They were still right 
where we came on them — ^putting up a fight in 
the dip, knowing that back of them were only 
the canon walls, and that there was only one 
way out — into our midst. 

Of course, after the first firing, we guessed 
there was going to be parley. But after the first 
fusilade of shots had passed, and, in response to 
the Sheriff’s shout for a surrender, a second 
began, the last hope of rounding them up faded. 
We were down among the bushes, creeping 
forward. Our foremost men fired a return to 
that renewed fusilade. I could hear bullets 
plug into tree stems. When one of our men 
called on the name of God in a voice like a 
voice of remorse, I used, instead of more care, 
less care in my advance, got up from hands and 
knees, and ran forward on the heels of the 
Sheriff and Apache who were in the lead. 

There was now no fear of shooting up our own 
party. We were all now looking down into the 
dip ; and the darts of flame, when the rustlers 
fired, gave us their location easily. I clapped 
down beside a shadow that I saw was that of 
Apache. At the same moment a voice yelled 
a curse at us from the bushes across the dip. 
Apache fired into the bush whence the voice had 
come, and we heard the cry of the man there : 
“ That’s got me ! ” in a desperate voice. 

“ I said I would get you, Buck Johnson ! ” 
shouted Apache. 

Another shot, from a man beside me, further 


AT THE HOLE IN THE WALL 259 

decreased the number of flashes from the bushes 
opposite us. All this seemed to take place in 
ten minutes, but I think it must have been 
a deal longer than that, and I take it that both 
sides were making sure not to fire wild, 
aiming always where a flash came from, or 
where, by peering and watching, they thought 
they saw a bulk in a bush that might be a man 
and not a shadow. I do know that a stump of 
log, beside the extinguished fire of the rustlers, 
was observed afterwards, by the Sheriff, to be 
chipped and riddled by bullets, and several of 
our men acknowledged to having taken good 
aim for it. 

But why I say I think it must have taken 
longer than I imagined at the time is because, 
as I peered ahead and kept as calm as possible, 
determined to do no wild shooting, I saw, as 
I thought, a rifle thrust up from a bush, and I 
blazed at it — ^taking no sight of course, sight 
being out of the question in that light, but just, 
as they say, lining for it — and then knew it was 
a tree branch at which I had fired by the way 
that, after my shot, though the bush flurried 
and fell still, the projecting little line of black 
was just as before. And still peering at the 
place, I saw it all more distinct, lighter ; the 
bushes seemed to rise up and look at us. 

There was dead silence. Everybody ceased 
firing. It was like waking from a dream. I 
had a moment of wanting to yell ; and then, up 
before me, something rose. I looked — and saw 
the Sheriff’s hat on the top of his rifle. There 


260 


HANDS UP ! 

was no response. He stood boldly up. No 
response. We could hear the little tinkle- 
tinkle, bubble-bubble of the spring in the 
dip. 

One by one we rose and followed the Sheriff. 
The smell of gunpowder drifted away. The 
scent of the balsam triumphed again, and we 
none could look at the other in the morning 
light. 

All this gained a mere three lines in the 
Eastern papers. In the Western papers it 
had its half column — and I was glad the names 
of the posse were not given. “A posse under 
Sheriff Lincoln Smith ” was quite sufficient. 

When we came back again to Black Kettle, 
there occurred a droll incident that not even 
the Western papers mentioned. 

We rode our horses into the “ square ” and 
half of the posse dismounted. It was close on 
the supper hour and we were hungry men. The 
last grub we had was beans and bacon, bought 
from a ranch where we had gone for provisions 
on the slower journey home. And that had 
been all eaten at noon. 

Then we all waited expectant, for Sheriff 
Smith had not dismounted ; and we expected, 
from his sudden stern demeanour, that some 
legal form of disbanding us whom he had sworn 
in was now to be the card. 

“ Say I ” he said. “ The train comes in about 
now. I reckon I might as well go right aboard 
and get back to Lone Tree and report.” 

He glanced oddly at Apache. 


AT THE HOLE IN THE WALL 261 

“ Oh, better stop over to-night. Sheriff,” one 
said. 

“You can ride over in the morning,” said 
another. 

“ I wouldn’t stay the night anyhow,” said 
Sheriff Smith. “ I got to get back. This 
passear has taken long enough. It’s a question 
of taking the train now or — I guess the porter 
will have some crackers and fruit if there ain’t 
no dining-car. But — ” his horse edged nearer 
to Apache’s. 

Apache had not dismounted. Neither had 
Yuma. I had. 

Apache’s pony became restive and edged 
away. Yuma Bill’s pony became restive and 
edged between. Mine responded to a pressure 
of my hand on his neck and turned round be- 
tween Yuma and the Sheriff. Thus two horses 
were between Apache and the Sheriff. The air 
was electric. 

“ Duty is duty, boys ! ” snapped the Sheriff. 
He looked at us all, with a puzzled face. “ Duty 
may sometimes be hell ; but it’s got to be done,” 
he said. 

The horses moved in a little dance. 

“No, Sheriff — ^you can’t do it,” came the 
Colonel’s quiet voice. 

The Sheriff looked round, and then back — 
at us all — at Apache Kid — at the Colonel 
standing there with a hand resting on the 
hitching-pole, the other caressing his beard. 

“I should hate to do it, but — ” the Sheriff 
began. 


262 


HANDS UP ! 

“ You ain’t goin’ to,” said Yuma Bill. 

“ No — you can’t do it,” said Panamint Pete 
from the other side of the Sheriff. 

“Make a fresh deal of it,” said Apache, 
looking at Smith keenly, with that queer 
twinkle in his eyes. “ Take the train back — 
I hear it screaming now^ — I’ve got good ears, 
Sheriff. You wdll be happier yourself. Make 
a fresh deal. Go right back to Lone Tree on 
the train — or by the trail if you prefer. It’s 
only a few hours’ ride by trail. Then start a 
fresh game.” 

Sheriff Smith looked at his pony’s ears, 
meditative. Then he raised his eyes to Apache 
again. He looked at Apache’s left arm in its 
soiled sling. 

“ Well,” he said, “ for once I guess I’ll be man 
first and sheriff after. But,” he turned to us, 
“ you boys got to keep this quiet.” 

“ That’s all right ! ” we said. The one or 
two who were not “ in the know,” and had not 
recognised Apache Kid, looked puzzled. Look- 
ing at them I saw light dawning on their faces 
as they scrutinised “Charlie Carry 1,” and I saw 
from the other expression, that followed upon 
the one of astonishment, that they were of the 
Sheriff’s mind as it was now. 

The train came in. 

The Sheriff did not take it. “ I’ll disband 
you boys,” said he, “and then we’ll all eat 
supper.” He swung from his horse. “ It’s 
all right,” he snapped and nodded. Nobody 
cheered. We were all moved beyond cheering. 


AT THE HOLE IN THE WALL 263 

He stayed for supper and hit the trail for 
Lone Tree later. It was a very strained, excited 
moment when he thanked us all, we all 
clustered before the Palace, and then turned to 
Apache and said : 

“ Thank you especially — Mr. Carryl ! ” 

Then he swung to his saddle, and we didn’t 
even cheer then. 

We passed indoors anon, to drink the 
Sheriff’s health, when the dust of his going fell — 
and a little later Apache was missed. 

“ Where’s Apache Kid ? ” 

“ Dunno.” 

We looked at each other. Then we looked 
at the bar-keep. 

“ The house is on Apache Kid for to-night,” 
he said. “ What will you drink, gents ? ” 

“ Where’s the Colonel ? ” was the next cry. 

“ Where’s the Colonel ? ” 

“ Here I am, gents. I was selling a hoss.” 

“ Oh ! ” we cried. Some winked. Some 
nodded. 

Nobody said anything beyond that “ Oh ! ” 

We all waited on in Black Kettle over night 
and of course we all were up in the morning, 
bright and early, calculating to see the Sheriff 
back. 

“ He rode home all right last night. He as 
much as passed his word,” figured Yuma, over 
breakfast. “ I thought that he would ride 
up and touch the court-house wall with his 
forefinger and then wheel and come surging 
back — metaphorically speaking. That sheriff 


264 HANDS UP ! 

would never cold-deck no man,” and he selected 
a wooden toothpick. 

“ Yes — I guess he’ll be back early with a 
fresh hoss and that Injun tracker, reckoning on 
Apache burning the trail prompt. He knows 
he gets no assistance here.” 

But the Sheriff did not arrive. We waited on, 
all the late posse. But Sheriff Smith had not 
arrived by dinner-time. We waited on anxiously. 
Even poker failed to pass the time. The bar- 
keep and the proprietor of the Palace wrestled 
with the intestines of the damaged nickel-in-the- 
slot hurdy-gurdy and succeeded in urging it to sing 
again. It sang with just a slight cough at the 
end of bars ; but it failed to cheer — and failed 
even to irritate Yuma Bill. 

Supper -time came — and no Sheriff. 

“ He's swearing in a new posse,” somebody 
suggested, “ and volunteers is tardy.” 

“ Well — ^job lost or no job lost, I got to stay 
on here till he comes back,” said one. 

^ But the Sheriff did not come that night. 
Sheriff Lincoln Smith, indeed, never came to 
Black Kettle again. 


CHAPTER XXIII 

A DEPUTY SHERIFF HITS THE TRAIL 

There is no doubt that machinery is very useful. 
Personally I have no use for machinery. From 
automobiles to alarm clocks I bar mechanism. 
Once, when I was up in British Columbia and 
could not get a job cow-punching there, I went 
to work in a saw -mill as a yard-teamster. They 
woke us with a steam-whistle. So on the third 
morning I quit. If the old pony express had 
not been such a temptation to hold-up men I 
could wish that the land West of Missouri had 
remained “ The Great American Desert ” of the 
earlier maps, and had known no railway — only 
the stage coach (in spite of all the aches it gives) 
and the pony express. And such is my distaste 
for telegraphs that, when I heard that the 
telegraph people had substituted steel poles for 
wooden ones over the Wind River Plains, 
because in bad winters, when teamsters were 
caught in blizzards there, they used to cut up the 
telegraph poles for firewood, I wanted to get up 
a signed protest. What was a quick message 
running along the wires, what was a little 
money spent on telegraph poles compared with 
the life of a teamster ? 

Progress has no use for me — which is more 
humble than saying that I have little use for 
Progress. 

But we might have stayed on longer, use- 
lessly, than we did at Black Kettle, waiting the 
265 


266 


HANDS UP ! 

return of the Sheriff, if Scotty had not finally 
been unable to stand the strain and so got on to 
the man at Lone Tree on his “ instrument.” 
He had enough “ savvy ” to make it “ just for 
a friendly chat, seeing that things are so quiet.” 

And the Lone Tree man did not need to be 
asked questions. He began, as soon as he was 
called up, to ask what we had done to Sheriff 
Smith. 

“ I don’t know,” Scotty replied. “ Why do 
you ask that ? ” 

“ He has quit,” was the reply. 

“ What do you mean by ‘ quit ’ exactly ? ” 

“ He has resigned his position. He says he 
has held the office long enough and should make 
room for another man.” 

“ Oh ! What’s that for ? ” 

“ Nobody knows — unless he just means what 
he says. But he has been successful enough. 
Maybe he is annoyed at wiping out that gang 
instead of bringing them in. He is a humane 
person.” 

“ Yes, maybe that’s it.” 

’ And with this news Scotty came surging back 
to the hotel. 

We toasted, with great admiration. Sheriff 
Lincoln Smith ; and then, one by one, or two 
by two, went home — each to our own work. 

Apache Kid dislocated things quite enough 
without bringing everything to a standstill. 
And when we returned, Pete and I, to the 
Triangle, we had to tell and re-tell our ex- 
perience till we were sorry we ever started out. 


A DEPUTY SHERIFF HITS THE TRAIL 267 

When I was told off to ride over into Walsh 
County, and help to herd back to the range a 
bunch of our strays, froni the round-up there, 
I hoped no one at the Walsh round-up would 
know I had been in the chase to the Hole in the 
Wall. But they did know — and I was pestered 
beyond words . So it was good to be back again 
on the road, sitting my brone alone, holding the 
night herd, or falling asleep under quiet stars, 
on the return trip. 

Pete I did not see for some time again 
(not till the round-ups were over, and extra 
hands, hired for them, were gone), as he, thanks 
to his cutting -out capacity, was over at other 
round-ups. I verily believe he recognised cows 
by their faces as often as not and had no need to 
look at either brand or ear marks. 

The extra hands drifted off ; where, who 
knows ? It is always a mystery to me whither 
they do go, whence they come. The harvesters 
who flood the wheat country for six weeks, and 
then depart, are also a mystery. What do they 
do the other forty-six weeks of the year ? 

After the extra hands had gone, and the 
round-ups were over, there came a lull ; and 
Pete, who was, as they say, a man with an 
“ itching foot,” fired me with a desire to go up to 
the cowboy annual sports either at Cheyenne or 
Denver. 

“ They are sure good for a man if he thinks 
he is a rider — good and humbling, and give a 
man something to live up to,” he said. “ I 
reckon on the strength of our services to the 


268 HANDS UP ! 

country the boss would be willing to let us lay 
off — so we don’t need to feel honieless and lone- 
some while sitting around watching the diver- 
sions in the arena. I likes, when I’m enjoying 
myself, to be able to picture, between the 
stunts, a bunk-house somewheres where I know 
I’m going back again. I likes to see in my 
mind’s eye a certain particular range of hills, or 
special secluded coulees, or some familiar bush 
a-waving on the top of a draw, and say : ‘ There 
is my own, my native land,’ and after these 
diversions are through I pikes back there.” 

And he was able to allow himself that solace, 
for the boss was willing. 

So, in a few days, we were mixing with the 
crowds, jostling the sunburnt men of the ranges, 
and the pale-faced of the city who gather to see 
the annual riding contest when the men of the 
sage-brush ride for the championship of the 
world, and a belt. That high-sounding phrase, 

championship of the world,” does not appeal 
to me very much. It is amazing in what cham- 
pionships the best man does not necessarily win. 
I have seen an Indian crease ” a wild horse — 
that is, fire a shot at a long range and shoot him 
in the loose flesh of the neck, so that the horse 
is stunned for long enough to be saddled. And 
when I have told of the incident to a fat know- 
all in England he has told me : 

“ Oh — it’s very picturesque, no doubt ; but 
these fellows can’t shoot. When they come to 
shooting at a target with the ordinary militia 
they are no good.” 


A DEPUTY SHERIFF HITS THE TRAIL 269 

I doubt if an Indian has ever shot with the 
militia at a target. And e^n target -shooting 
has its tricks, and when target -shooters come to a 
contest — ^well, there is a notable case (of which, 
perhaps, the less said the better) where the 
winner had his cartridges specially made, the 
powder weighed in jeweller’s scales, every 
charge exactly the same. When a contest 
becomes close a little thing like that is going to 
count. 

Then there is another case of a cup-winner, 
in another sport, taking cramp and being 
massaged while his adversary stood by and got 
a chill. The massaged and losing one began 
fresh when his winning opponent was really 
jaded. And he won the cup, thanks to that 
massage which freshened him and thanks to the 
chill that stiffened the other man. Such little 
things also count. In the West that is called 
“ cold-decking a man ” ; and however the 
sharp East may see these things the West does 
not wholly admire. 

“ Politics ” and “ Sport ” are all like that ; 
and I have no use for either. I can ride a horse 
for the love of it. I can shoot for the love of 
it — ^but “sport” is often weariness and vexation 
of spirit to participator and beholder. I could 
work up no enthusiam over the winning of the 
belt. But I was on my feet, many times, waving 
my hat over some brilliant recovery in the 
saddle, and I found myself sitting sneering like a 
jade idol at some piece of “ stunt ” or swagger. 

I have seen a crowd jump on the chest of an 


270 


HANDS UP ! 

umpire at a football match — I have heard the 
recrimination at a lawn tennis match. To 
Hades with “ sport ” so far as I am concerned. 
There is a kink in me somewhere, a spirit of 

not wanting.” I have seen men of my 
calibre coaxed into a horse race at the ranch — 
and do nothing ; and yet, on the same horse, 
at the round-up, I have seen the same men 
doing better work and riding better than the 
race winner. I have tried to take the buck out 
of a bad pony in the corrals, and been thrown. 
I have mounted as cross a horse to go drive a 
herd twenty miles, and nary a buck. I prefer 
to see a cow-puncher pot a grey wolf that is 
worrying a calf, an Indian crease an outlaw 
horse, a prospector bring down a duck for his 
dinner, to hearing your “ Oh pshaw, very 
picturesque ” person talk about the militia at 
their targets. 

I fear that there is a good deal of Apache Kid 
in me ! 

Civilisation seems to me a collection of 
people who, on the one hand, call in the police 
if a burglar comes along and, on the other, of 
persons who pay some tough to buy dynamite 
to blow up the buildings of their rivals so that 
they can corner the market. To see people 
fighting for a strap in a street car nearly makes 
me run amok, makes me hunger to pull a gun 
and herd them in, one at a time, at the step, 
as if they were cattle. 

I hope there is elbow room in the Great 
Beyond — elbow room and no targets — only a 


A DEPUTY SHERIFF HITS THE TRAIL 271 

sufficiency of game, some mountains to break 
the monotony, some prairies to ride over — and 
no patronising angel to come along and, when 
he sees that a few of us can ride well, offer us a 
belt for the best rider. Belts are like money. 
I suppose money was instituted to save swopping 
a sack of wheat, or a horse, for bacon and beans, 
so to speak — so many tokens, so much wheat — 
so many tokens, so much horse ; but now we 
never think of the horse and the wheat, only of 
the tokens, the money. 

Some such thoughts were jumping about in my 
brain as I cannoned off one man on to another, 
on the crowded side-walk, and apologised to 
both and tried to dodge a third — wondering 
how people managed to steer clear on side- 
walks. We were on our way to our hotel, and 
as we came to the street in which it was situated 
I saw before us a man whose pliant back was 
familiar. 

We went straight into the dining-room, 
choosing a corner table, and ordered dinner. 
And then I looked round, and my eyes fell on a 
man who was entering the room, and I re- 
cognised Yuma Bill. 

Up I rose and shouted : “ Yuma ! ” 

No attention. 

“ Yuma ! ” I yelled. 

No attention. 

He moved on to the counter and then turned 
lightly and, with his back to it, surveyed me. 
His face lit and he came over to us, held out his 
hand, pump-handled us wildly, and sat down 


272 HANDS UP ! 

with us. As he did so some one brushed behind 
me and dropped a paper before me on the table, 
and looking over my shoulder I saw the man, 
whose back I had seemed to know, going out 
of the door. 

On the paper was written : 

“ Room 17. Come up — all of you. I want 
to ask you something. Apache.” 

But we were not to know what he wanted to 
ask. 

I remember how, after dinner, we had our 
meal tickets punched, Pete and I ; and how we 
wrangled over which of the tickets was to be 
punched for Yuma ; Yuma crying out that the 
only way was for him to pay his own. The 
meals were twenty-five cents each to us, on 
the tickets, but along the bottom of the tickets 
were figures for “ extra dishes ” — fifteen cent, 
and ten cent ones. I remember how Pete and 
I tossed a quarter over the matter, and how I 
won and had a fifteen mark punched on my 
ticket, and Pete had a ten cent one punched on 
his, to the tune of much mock solemnity over 
such petty fooling. 

Then we strayed upstairs — Pete, Yuma Bill, 
and I — and something happened. 

Pete and I shared a room — number 10. I 
had invited Yuma up to see it, handing across to 
him, as we rose from the table, the paper that 
Apache had dropped before me. 

“ If you’ve never put up at this house before,” 
said I, “ you may as well stroll up with us and 
see upstairs.” 


A DEPUTY SHERIFF HITS THE TRAIL 273 

So up we went, passed room 10, and on along 
the corridor to number 17. Pete was in the 
lead. I was behind with Yuma. 

I saw Pete raise his head, as he came to room 
17, in a curious jerk. It was a movement of a 
man of the open, hearing something dubious, 
and going on guard. Yuma and I intuitively- 
stopped. We had been chatting as we came 
along the corridor, but ceased abruptly — ^not 
only our chatter, but moved more slowly. 

The door of number 17 was open. Pete 
looked in at the hinge and dropped his hand 
to his hip, and then missed his belt, discarded 
in the civilisation of the city. Yuma dipped 
oddly into his tail-coat, a heavy swallow-tail, 
such as is esteemed highly by so many range- 
men, and marks the occasion festive. He drew 
forth a Smith and Webly and thrust it into 
Pete’s hand. Then Pete, gun in hand, backed 
on to our toes and, with his left hand behind him, 
thrust us back, turned his head slightly, and 
whispered : “ Keep talking, you ! ” 

“ Oh ! Let me see,” said Yuma in a great 
voice, “ which I suppose the hotel is plumb full, 
with the annual being on ? ” 

And back, back we went — ^to room 10, and 
backed in there. 

“ What is it ? ” asked Yuma. 

Pete turned fully and said : 

“A gent in a blue suit, with a little silver 
star on his left breast, and a big silver-mounted 
gun in his fist, sitting in the chair — that’s what 
it is.” 


s 


274 HANDS UP ! 

“ Oh ! Waiting for Apache Kid.” 

“ Well — where is Apache ? ” 

A door at our end of the corridor slammed, as 
if in answer to our question, and Apache passed 
along the corridor w’histling, with ruffled hair, 
and a towel in his hands. 

“ Come in here, damn you,” whispered Pete. 
Apache started, and was inside our room on the 
instant. 

Hurriedly Pete told him of the peace officer in 
his room. We made no attempt to greet him, 
or to ask him w^hat he was doing in the city, 
why he risked visiting the sports. 

“ Oh ! ” he said, and paused, and gave a 
frowm of thought. “ Is the window open ? ” 

“ Can’t call to mind.” Pete considered. “ Yes 
— for sure — I remember the little dinky cover 
on the table in the window was waving in the 
wind.” 

Apache w^alked to our window and looked out. 

“ No,” he said, “ I’m not a Rocky Mountain 
sheep. I wonder — I wonder ” 

“ What ? ” 

He sat gently down on the edge of the bed 
and began to towel his hair. 

“I see your arm is working again,” said 
Yuma. 

“ Eh ! What ? Oh yes, sure ! I wonder ” 

“ Can we help you out of it ? ” said Pete. 

“ Well, what I’m w ondering is this : you 
remember the pardon ? ” 

“ Sure,” said Yuma. 

“ Yap — heerd of it,” said Pete. 


A DEPUTY SHERIFF HITS THE TRAIL 275 

“ I saw it,” said I. 

“ Well, I went to wash in my shirt, and I left 
my jacket in there. Now ” 

“ By heck ! You’re up against it if the 
pardon is in your jacket.” 

“ Well, say ! ” said Yuma. “ This ain’t a 
matter for debate. This here is a matter for 
prompt action.” 

“ Lend me your gun,” said Apache. “ Mine’s 
in there too.” 

Yuma held his hand and Pete returned the 
gun to him. Then Yuma handed it over to 
Apache Kid. 

“ Easy now,” I said. “ You’ve to get away 
again without making a fresh crime.” 

“ Sure,” said Pete. 

“ It’s dead easy,” said Yuma. “ I’ll do it.” 

“ Do what ? ” asked Apache. 

“ I’ll run along and shout at the door : 
* Say — you looking for Apache Kid ? He’s in 
the washhouse. He’s climbin’ out the wash- 
house winder on to the roof. He’s on to you.’ 
Out he comes at my excited hail, and then — ” 
Yuma looked at Pete, at me. 

Pete wagged his head, bent to our joint 
“grip,” and pulled it from under the bed; 
produced two guns, took one, and gave me the 
other. 

Yuma held out his hand to Apache for his gun 
to be returned. 

“ Now,” said Apache, “ I’m the only one shy 
a gun.” 

“ Well — you want to be,” said Yuma. 


276 


HANDS UP ! 

“ No — no — ^look here ! Yuma — Yuma — 

Apache began, but Yuma was gone with his 
gun in his hand. 

We heard him run along the corridor, and 
then : 

“ Say ! You looking for Apache Kid ? 

“ He’ll raise the whole house ! ” moaned 
Pete. 

“ He’s in the lavatory ! He’s going over the 
winder ! ” we heard. “ He’s ” 

We stood at our door, pushing Apache back, 
all trembling with the excitement before action. 
Along came feet. 

“ Well, I got one thing I want anyhow, if I 
lose him — ” and level with our door was the 
peace officer, and the feet of Yuma Bill sounded 
after him. 

Out we leapt and crashed on the top of that 
marshal’s deputy. It was as if I was back 
in the corrals wrestling a maverick. And he 
shouted too. 

“ Don’t bleat ! ” growled Yuma, and took his 
head in both hands and beat it on the floor, 
yanked it up and smashed it down. 

“ Don’t kill him 1 ” Pete said, and I said — I 
forget what now. We hauled the deputy 
abruptly into our room. Yuma turned him 
over and he and Apache ransacked the pockets. 

“ Here’s the pardon,” said Apache — opened it, 
looked at it. “ Yes, that’s right. Not that 
it’s of much use to me now ” 

“ Reckons this is where we quits,” said Yuma, 
standing up. “By heck I I did hate using a 


A DEPUTY SHERIFF HITS THE TRAIL 277 

man that way. Never did it before — but if a 
man has wax on his finger-nails, and you can’t 
plug him, then the only alternative is ” 

“ To stack your cards,” said Pete. 

“ Sure.” 

“ He’ll be coming round — and you’ll have to do 
it again,” said I. 

Pete looked long at Yuma. 

“ Yuma,” he said, “if it’s a fair question — 
was it you held the bosses at Antelope Creek on 
the night ” 

Yuma looked at Apache — Apache at Yuma. 
There was nothing said. 

Pete turned to me. 

“Apache and Yuma quits,” he said. “We 
rescues the marshal’s man. We hears sounds 
of a struggle, and we comes to his aid. We acts 
missionaries and Good Samaritans.” 

Yuma looked at me, and then at Pete. Then 
he said : 

“You forgets that Bucket has been suspected 
some. Did you ever write that letter ” 

I took his arm and turned him about. 

“ Git ! ” I said. “ And you too, Apache ! ” 

We gripped hands ; and five minutes later 
Pete and I were listening to the silence in the 
corridor, Pete and I alone, waiting for the first 
sign of returning consciousness on the part of 
the deputy — when we would dash water on him 
and begin our play-acting. 

Pete closed our “ grip,” and shoved it under 
the bed again while we waited, grim and 
thoughtful. 


278 


HANDS UP ! 

“ He don’t seem to be very eager about re- 
turning to the land of the living,” he said. 

“ Shall we dash water on him now ? ” I asked, 
feeling very jumpy. 

Pete frowned and considered. 

“ We got to give Apache and Yuma every 
show of a start,” he said. 

He puckered his brows at the man on the 
floor. Then he sat back and gave a very 
foolish cackling little laugh, as if he was a trifle 
demented. 

“ By heck ! ” said he, and put his hand down 
to feel the man’s heart, knelt there, still laughing 
horribly. 

“ By heck ! ” he said. “ Now ain’t this 
comical ? He’s plumb dead ! ” 


CHAPTER XXIV 

ROOM THIRTEEN 

I NOTICED Pete fingering his moustache in a 
most savage and twitching manner. 

“ Pooh ! ” I thought. “ He’s distraught. 
Now is the time to show the big capacity ; now 
is the time to show the capacity for calm in 
moments when some people would get ‘rattled.’ ” 

And then I found that I was plucking at my 
moustache in the same way. 

Pete glanced at me. 

“ Wlien you are cool and collected,” he said, 
“ we’ll pow-wow and then act.” 

“ Cool and collected ! ” I cried. “ Stop pull- 
ing your moustache. You’d let a fool see you 
were in a corner.” 

“ Was I pulling my moustache ? ” 

“ I think we’d better get him out again, and 
then walk dowm and tell the proprietor that 
we’ve been trying to bring him round.” 

Pete looked out into the quiet corridor, 
nodded to me, and w^e lifted the body, carried 
it out stealthily and laid it down again outside 
our door. 

“ Now,” he said, “ you be throwin’ water on 
him. I’m off. This is not the kind of play a 
man can think about too long before his leading 
card. If I don’t start right now ” 

“ Wait a bit,” I said. “ Did we see any one 
on the way up ? No — no we didn’t. Pete — 
we’re going down together ; and if there’s 
279 


?80 HANDS UP ! 

nobody in the vestibule we’re going to walk 
right out — and go and see to-day’s riding at the 
arena, and come back to supper full of talk of the 
riding — and nothing else — till we’re told about 
this.” 

He pulled his moustache, then perceived what 
he was doing and stroked his chin instead. 

“ And if there’s somebody in the vestibule ? ” 
he asked. 

“ Then we don’t run chances. We go to 
the proprietor and say : ‘ Proprietor ! I want 
to speak to you a minute ’ ; and we bring him 
up here. Wait a bit ! Wait a bit ! Where wall 
Yuma and Apache be ? If we could get them 
back ! Apache I mean ” 

“ Get him — Oh sure ! I see. You think 
this marshal was playing a lone hand ? No — 
I think it’s as well Apache pulled his freight. 
But where is he liable to be ? I don’t know. 
Nobody knows now. Is that floor right in 
there ? Look at it. Look at it reasonable and 
sedate, Bucket, and ask yourself is it all right.” 

“ It’s all right,” said I. 

“ You ain’t looking at it calm and cold.” 

“ Yes* — it’s all right.” 

“ No blood — no teeth or anything ? ” 

“ No ” 

“ We’ll git down.” 

Down we went, and found nothing but the 
stove in the vestibule and a large spittoon 
keeping it company. The side door, giving into 
the restaurant, was closed. So we went straight 
out on to the side -walk. No loafing porter — 


ROOM THIRTEEN 281 

nobody below belonging to the hotel. We 
strolled off. But we did not speak. Like 
automatons we projected ourselves to the show- 
ground — and there found Yuma Bill ! 

“ Hullo, boys ! ” he hailed us. “ Going in 
again ? ” 

“ Where is he ? ” I said under my breath. 

“ Eh ? ” 

“ Where is he ? You know.” 

“ A. K. ? ” 

“ Yap.” 

“ Quit ! Why ? ” 

“ What are you doing here ? ” 

“ Me ! I’ve come to see the riding stunts ! ” 
said Yuma airily. 

Pete said : 

“ We’d better get inside. Tail on there, and 
talk about bosses till we get through.” 

Of course I imagined that every other man 
at the gates was sleuth of some kind. Behind 
me, I heard some men who had just arrived on 
our heels. 

“ Bit hot in town, ain’t it ? I just run into 
a murder,” one said. 

“ Where was it ? ” asked another. 

“ Oh, some man from Montana got too much 
liquor in him, and he started to shoot up a bar- 
keep because he wouldn’t serve him no more.” 

I was not interested in that case ! 

“ There’s a lot of toughs in town,” I heard 
next. “ They brings discredit on the boys from 
the ranges. Same class that follows up travel- 
ling shows — toughs — just the lowest rung, they 


282 


HANDS UP ! 

are. Always around if there’s a fair, or a show — 
watch your pockets in this here crowd — I hear 
there’s some trouble at the hotel where I am.” 

I gave anxious ear again. I could almost 
imagine I recognised his voice as the voice of a 
man who was putting up at the hotel ! 

“Oh 1 Anybody killed ? ” 

“ No — ^nothing desperate that -away. A 
sneak thief got up in the bedrooms. Took 
away some jewels. Well ! A man don’t want 
to leave his jewellery laying about. There’s a 
hotel safe, ain’t there ? ” 

Yuma, ahead, was saying to Pete : 

“ No, sir — ^they rides with the hackamore only, 
and no riding on spurs is allowed, and no 
buckin’ straps of no kind.” 

We were through into the grounds, climbing 
down to seats, and presently were practically 
alone. 

“ Look here, Yuma, for heaven’s sake ! ” I 
said. “ Don’t you know where Apache could be 
found ? We have something to post him on.” 

“ What’s that ? ” 

“ That man that was waiting for him. You 
killed him, Yuma.” 

Yuma said nothing. But he raised his head 
and his jaw dropped, and his eyes went wdde. 

“ And you two ? What did you do ? ” he 
asked thickly. 

“We did the best — we left him lying in the 
corridor.” 

“ Say ! And sneaked out ? ” he almost 
w^hispered. 


ROOM THIRTEEN 283 

“ We walked out.” 

“ Nobody around ? ” 

“ No.” 

He looked down between the seats to the 
ground below, and locked his fingers. 

“ Well, it ain’t no good — ^Apache can’t be 
posted up on these there developments. I 
guess he’s a-sifting down like a comet into 
Mexico. What a dern fool I was — ” he paused. 
“ Never thought of that. I ought to have 
suggested doing intentional what I done by 
accident, and then we all walks out ” 

I was horrified for some reason, yet held my 
peace. But Pete turned his head. 

“ No,” he said to Yuma, “ I ain’t that kind of 
man. And Bucket ain’t. And I don’t think 
you are, if it comes to the bit.” 

“ No,” said Yuma, “ you’re right. Which I 
am not. I ain’t no garrotter. No more is 
Apache Kid.” 

He sat staring at a horse that had come 
ploughing into the arena with four men hanging 
to it. “ Well, partners, I guess none of us 
will hear more of Apache Kid again. Damn 
him ! He’s always making trouble. What does 
he want to go and raise a whole country for so 
that all the boys, who ever rode the range in the 
lo-cality, keeps on giving him a show ? ” 

I heard a shout, and then a roar of : 

“ Leather ! Leather ! Touched leather ! ” 

Evidently the competitor down there in the 
arena was barred. 

The same thought came to us all at that 


284 


HANDS UP ! 


shout — ^that we must watch the riding ; and so 
there we sat staring ahead of us down at the 
arena — each thinking his own thoughts, with 
the Apache Kid for the king-bolt of them. 

I remember little of that day’s riding. I 
look back on it all as little as I can ; and my 
worst nightmare is when, in sleep, I walk again 
into the hotel at which we put up. Not that 
there was, in the event, any cause for us to 
trouble. We were never suspected. I think 
that the body being at our door was even in 
our favour. 

There was a kind of hush in the dining-room 
when we arrived. And from the table near us 
we heard the news. 

“ Oh ! That’s bad ! Very bad ! ” I said, 
when a man at the next table, a nodding ac- 
quaintance by now, passed me the news. 

“ Give the house a bad name,” said Pete, 
chipping in. 

“ Well — some folks will quit now,” another 
opined. 

“ Oh — ^not me,” said Pete. “ That kind of 
thing ain’t going to happen twice in the one 
hotel. What was the motive ? Murderer 
caught ? ” 

“ No — nobody caught. His pockets had been 
gone through all right.” 

“ Have they any idea ? ” 

“ I don’t know.” 

Another voice joined in : “ They tell me it 
was a peace officer. They surmise he was after 
somebody in the house.” 


ROOM THIRTEEN 285 

As the days passed and we heard all the story 
from different points of view, Pete and I kicked 
ourselves afresh. Apache had, of course, been 
in the place under another name and, besides 
that, several men, in some superstitious dislike 
of being in the house, simply left without a word 
that very day of the murder. And, leaving 
without a word, they did not pay their bills ! 
I think, if I remember rightly, that eight (Apache 
included, that is) left that floor, on which the 
deputy had been found, on the day of the 
murder — ^and only two paid up for their rooms 
and acknowledged why they were “ pulling 
out.’’ Perhaps the others did not like to 
acknowledge to such a distaste. Let us give 
them the benefit of the doubt and say so — 
perhaps they were ashamed of their squeamish- 
ness or superstition. 

The police made a special attempt to trace all 
these men, but only succeeded in finding two — 
first the one who had explained that he didn’t 
like to stay on — he had been in number 11, 
which was opposite number 10, and the body 
had been found right there, of course. He said 
he would feel always as if he was stepping over it. 

Second, a man was traced who had been in 
number 13 and said that he had fled because 
he was plumb foolish to have ever taken a room 
13 — ^reckoned the proprietor was foolish to have 
a room called 13 — a reasonable hotel never had 
a room 13. He hadn’t thought of it till the 
murder, and he wasn’t going to stay on. 

A third man came back of his own accord. 


286 


HANDS UP ! 

all unconscious of what he was coming to next 
day. He had been on w^hat is called a 
“ bender ” ; and what he had to do on his 
return gave him great chagrin — he had to 
convoy the police to the house where he said he 
had been dissipating. The proprietor told me 
that he was the worst scared man in America 
when he started out to identify the house and 
prove that he had been there, for he was three 
parts drunk and he feared he could not find the 
house ; and then again he feared, if he did find 
it, and arrived with the police, that the inmates 
would all swear that he had never been there, 
lest he was involved in some campaign for 
getting them into trouble. The chatting pro- 
prietor surreptiously pointed out to me that 
pathetic toper, and I had a sly squint at him ; 
certainly he looked as if he had been passing 
through agonies. The marks, not of drink 
alone, but of terror, were on his face. His lips 
bulged, his eyes were bloodshot, his hands 
fidgeted. I looked at myself in the long 
mirror that soared behind him where he sat, 
and I thought : “ Well, I don’t look like that, 
anyhow.” 

Then in the mirror I met the eye of the 
chatting proprietor — and thought it was weigh- 
ing me. I lay awake all night thinking of his 
glance — or, I should say, of w^hat I read into 
his glance — for, as I have said, Pete and I were, 
in the event, never suspected. 

And indeed there came another item of news 
that helped to make less suspicious the flight of 


ROOM THIRTEEN 287 

those who “ quit ” that floor abruptly. For a 
man, who had been at the far end of the 
corridor, after much thought, came to the 
proprietor, and said he : 

“ I know it ain’t considered according to 
Hoyle to lay information concerning no female” 
(I expect the proprietor jumped at that), “ but 
I’ve been thinking over the suspicions that follow 
these men who vamoosed from the floor w^here 
the deputy marshal cashed in, and I think it 
only fair to them to narrate that the female 
chamber-maid for that floor held me up there, 
on the morning of the said__trouble, and spoke 
very sharply to me — said that if she could 
find what man it was turned on the water in 
the wash-room, and turned it ofl, with wet 
hands, instead of filling the basin and then 
turning ofl, she w^ould step along and talk 
severely to him. She was standing there and 
holding up all the gents as they came along, 
and explaining to them that she was here to 
keep taps clean, and bedroom crockery clean, 
but that she was no menial. One gentleman 
I made up on on the stairs, after I had been 
lectured, asked me what I thought of it, and I 
said, ‘Well, of course she is a female, and 
waitress -ladies don’t care for a lot of things — 
won’t empty more than one basin-full in a 
room ; if a gentleman washes his hands twice 
in a day in his bedroom he’s got to wash next 
morning in his afternoon water, and so on — 
little things like that and this here tap trouble 
is just what one reckons to stand for from a 


288 


HANDS UP ! 

female in the land of the free.’ This gentleman 
said : ‘ Oh to hell with that ! I’m not the kind 
of man to complain of her to the proprietor, but 
I simply quits. I didn’t pack no more than a 
razor, a comb, and a toothbrush, and my be- 
longings being so limited I naturally packs them 
around in my hip pocket.’ ” 

The proprietor, hearing all this, shook his 
head and remarked sadly : “ It’s a wonder she 
didn’t complain to me ! ” 

The waitress, questioned, acknowledged to 
having held up a good many ones — some who 
were still there indeed. These men, when 
asked, said she had never spoken to them ! For 
a moment it looked as if here was a clue. Why 
did they lie ? Or did they lie ? Did the other 
man lie ? If so, why ? What lay behind this ? 
Only the sense of being superwhite with 
‘‘ females ” lay behind these denials. 

The hunt for clues bogged down somewhere 
about there and, if the murderer of the deputy 
marshal was being sought, we, at any rate, 
heard no further word of that trouble. 


CHAPTER XXV 

PETE DISCOURSES 

Pete and I, a month later, sat one night by the 
side of the waggon -road from Foothills to 
Navajo, where it swings round into the North 
West. A fire blazed before us, with a coffee- 
pot scenting the air ; and to the West were 
two waggons, loaded high with timber, and 
the waggon- horses inquiring into their nose- 
bags. 

The timber, which we were hauling from the 
Morgan Strong Lumber Company’s outfit at 
Foothills, was en route to a site chosen by Mr. 
Henry for a new corral of the Triangle. The 
last round-up had clinched, in his mind, the 
intention to build a corral over by Sand Creek. 
As the foreman explained it : 

“ ‘ ^Vhat you lose track of in the shuffle you 
discover in the deal,’ is another of these plati- 
tudes that stand for clever thinking. And 
most proverbs, or aphorisms, if you follow them, 
considering they are whole truth, will bring you 
to a boggy ford where you got to hitch a string 
of aphorisms together to get a long enough 
rope to haul you out. Mr. Henry reckons 
we lose a few head not only in the shuffle but in 
the deal and he quits reciting a proverb to him- 
self instead of building new corrals. Now we 
builds the corrals. There are some who looks 
upon an aphorism as gospel, whereas aphorisms, 
and proverbs generally, are half-lies, Wlien a 


290 HANDS UP ! 

man says ‘ What you lose in the shuffle you find 
in the deal ’ he ain’t stated all that is to it. 
Aphorisms is fragmentary — and no gent can live 
long on quick lunches. Wherefore he changes 
what was good enough for them he bought the 
ranch ofien and, improving the stock, intends 
keeping closer track on them. We falls to 
work in the slack season, and builds a corral over 
to Sand Creek, where he always feels a corral 
should be, and sheds for the new stock, and a 
sub-camp.” 

According to all cow -punching stories that 
ever I read, all that a cow-puncher would 
permit himself to do, in connection with such 
building operations, would be, on occasion, to 
rope a log and tow it, as the spirit moved him, 
to the site of the corral. But that cowboy is 
dead. It is true that Pete, when we pulled 
out from the lumber yards with our team, 
remarked : 

“ If I was invited now to sign one of these 
here papers in which a man has to tell his name, 
and age, and height in stockings, and profession 
in life — such as sometimes a man has to sign in 
the land of the free — I concloods it w^ould be 
nearer truth to certify myself pile-driver. .instead 
of roper.” 

The old tradition lingers but the new style 
“goes,” which, in the slang, does not mean 
“ departs ” but quite the opposite. 

It was a good three days’ trip, loaded and 
two nights we had to outspan, the first night at 
the hmit of waggon-road, so far as it served us. 


PETE DISCOURSES 291 

the second about half way between the waggon - 
road bend and the new camp site on Sand 
Creek. 

You do not haul a team thus with another 
man, and camp down beside him at night, with- 
out getting to know him better. Pete and I had 
been together a good deal by now, but to be 
partners among others is different from being 
partners, and alone, under stars. 

Of Apache we had heard no word since we 
returned to Henry and Stells (with Yuma Bill, 
who hired on to the Triangle instead of going 
back to his old outfit) ; and indeed no one had 
been either to Black Kettle or Lone Tree for so 
much as mail of late. 

But at Foothills we had come into the region 
of news. And some of the news had been of 
Apache Kid. It looked as if he had fallen a 
prey to that instinct, or whatever it be, that has 
been remarked by criminologists as common to 
all classes of wanted people — to visit again, 
sooner or later, the scene of the crime that put 
the law upon their track. It may be something 
akin with that spirit which prompts people to 
keep touching a tender place that has ceased to 
be actively painful — an aching tooth for example. 
But this sort of thing can be overdone. 

The first we had heard of the re -appearance 
of Apache Kid was a rumour that he had got 
boldly off a train at Lone Tree ; but this 
seemed too wild a rumour to be true. It had 
given Pete and me food for thought, however ; 
and now it gave us subject for discussion, when 


292 


HANDS UP ! 

we made camp and turned our toes to the 
companionable fire at night. 

Pete, fatherly, had noticed me, before we 
began this hauling, and while we were still at 
the home ranch, very eager to know when any 
one was going to ride into town. I had suspected, 
from his expression, that he w^as basing con- 
jectures on this anxiety ; and I surmised he was 
all wrong. I had guessed that he thought he had 
struck a trail, remembering how, at the hotel 
we put up at when we attended the sports, he 
had noticed that I preferred a certain table, and 
had said : 

“ Is this here scouting for the same table due 
to the Injun spirit in you of returning to the 
same old camp-fire stain, or is it — ’’ and he had 
ended in a grim closing of his mouth. 

I had pled guilty, at the time, without voicing 
any guilt — in silence. The w^aitress at that 
table had seemed more to my mind than 
the hard-visaged lady (the proprietor’s wife, I 
think) who attended at the other end of the 
room. And, indeed, I had chatted once or 
twice with our waitress ; but she was not the 
cause of my anxiety for mail, as Pete had 
thought. I doubt if she knew my name, and I 
knew only her Christian name, by hearing her 
called to by the proprietor’s wife. 

Pete, fatherly toward me, had ruminated on 
my anxiety for mails. The waitress at that 
restaurant was all he could think of as cause. 
But you may as well know that I had, at last, 
in the leisure of our holiday, written home to an 


PETE DISCOURSES 293 

uncle — father’s brother — for news of the dad. 
Relatives are sometimes kittle -cattle, and as I 
did not know how he would take my letter I 
wearied for a reply. 

It was on this, our second hauling from the 
Foothills, that Pete, by the fire, sitting in the 
odour of coffee, promulgated “ females,” re- 
charging his pipe. He had been studying my 
face — ^which perhaps had shown trouble — ^for I 
was thinking, at the moment, of my father, and 
wondering if he was still under the cloud, or if 
“ for they who are blinded we pray for light,” 
could be considered, by the parson, as having 
been answered. 

“ As regards females,” said Pete, “ I was 
once struck on a girl — she was a wonderful 
sight, narrow shoulders, broad hips. When 
you was coming behind her you did sure remark 
the swing of her quarters, which was as easy 
as a doe, walked like a watching doe, she did, in 
kind of waves and swings, which it might have 
been observing her made some observing gent 
coin the saying : ‘ A-curving along the side -walk 
like a swallow.’ ” 

“ Oh ! ” said I, looking up and “cottoning.” 
“ What did she turn the scales at ? Was she a 
Jersey ? I think you said something, and I was 
inattentive.” 

But I did not put him off his trail. He 
seemed to like me all the better for that. He 
was silent so long that I looked at him, and 
found his eye was friendly on me. 

“ If your intellect is now returned to the 


294 


HANDS UP ! 

mental reservation,” he said. “ I may mention 
that I never see her in a bunch. She was always 
running lonesome. Then one day I do see her 
with another female — with the boss’s wife where 
I was, same being related to me, so I was 
welcome to drop in. And the boss’s wife is 
speaking of a friend of hers who was a writer 
for the papers — ^him coming into the talk 
because one of these here reporter gents had 
been down on a free pass to write a whole lot 
about the place, because the railway had town 
lots for sale, and was wanting to create a stir. 
I see what he wrote after, and maybe anybody 
who had never seen the place might get his stuff 
by heart and come in, and see what he was told 
to see ; but to me it looked as if I was reading 
about the Noo Jerusalem. And the plain fact 
is that at a spiritualistic seance once a gent who 
had lived there and died there was got in touch 
with, and all he could be got to say about his con- 
dition was to ask for ’em to send on his blankets. 
But I’m side-tracking myself. What I was 
saying was that the boss’s wife agrees with me 
that what you read ain’t always what you see ; 
and to back her statements she says, not 
priding herself on him none — ^but to the contrary 
— having no erroneous ideas of the bigness of the 
job, however big the wages, she says : ‘ Well I 
know a little about these things, for my father 
was a journalist in ’Frisco ’ — ^which was quite 
true — ‘ and he used often to tell us — ’ and in 
chips this here lady I mentions as so elegant 
and attractive, and she says : ‘ Oh, yes — my 


PETE DISCOURSES 295 

mother—eh— on the staff— Seattle P.I. (Postal 
Intelligencer),’ but whether it was that her 
mother had been on the staff, or was fired off it, 
or had tried to get on, or had run after a man on 
the staff, didn’t amount to a row of red apples. 
I looks at the boss’s wife, and she looks at me, 
and then she gets on with her story ; but I 
wasn’t interested no more in that doe-lady. You 
can tell a card-player the way he shuffles the 
cards. What I say is, any man can have the 
whole indications of whether a woman is white 
or not from just such little things. Them little 
things is more vital than a whole lot ; and the 
man who calls them trivial is going to be fooled 
all the way. Here, you see, was failure to 
understand what the boss’s wife mentions her 
father for ; and here was failure to be able 
to hear that the boss’s wife’s father had been 
one of these there noospaper gents, without 
ferreting out some relative, and going one 
better. I mentions later a non-existent aunt of 
mine that had married a college professor, and 
the doe -lady says : ‘ My uncle,’ she says, ' eh — 
Harvard University.’ Now a man that plays 
poker some didn’t need to do no more than look 
at her pretty face, and see how it tilts up as she 
speaks, to know it was a bluff. She maybe had 
a knave in her pack, but he was the only picture 
card.” 

I looked at Pete and smiled. I knew he was 
telling me all this not for the sake of shooting 
off a chapter of his life -story at me, but for my 
sake, he being a bachelor of the ranges who 


296 HANDS UP ! 

respected a good woman but who feared for his 
friends lest a woman in their lives might mean 
marriage, and marriage an end of their freedom. 

“ Look at me,” I said. “ Is there a queen in 
my pack ? ” 

He seemed caught up at that . He had thought 
that he was subtly pumping wisdom into me. 
Our eyes met. 

“ I have been asking a whole lot if the mail 
has come,” said I, “ ever since we came home ; 
but that was because I’m trying to get in touch 
with my home folks, and hear about ” 

“ Your dad ! ” he cried. “ Well, Bucket,” he 
held out his hand, “ shake ! Now — I often 
wondered you didn’t do that ; but every man’s 
life is his own. It was sure the only weak 
place in your story when you told us ; but I 
didn’t like to say more then. And is your dad 
still in that sad place ? How is he ? ” 

“ I don’t know. That’s why I’m so eagerly 
and anxiously waiting news.” 

“ You posts me when you hears,” he said, 
“for I am interested in your dad. It kind of 
made me feel soft, the way you tells of his 
shouting that-aways about your brother’s un- 
expected demise.” 

A little later : 

“ Don’t you think,” he said, “ that I’m one of 
these here permiscuous woman-haters, I merely 
has learnt to distrust folk that put on dog, and 
such as ain’t genuine, and gents and females 
impartial that toots their own bazoo and must 
always raise you one better — ^which is generally 


PETE DISCOURSES 297 

one worse ; they whoops it up on you so that 
(all seeming friendly and sociable — ^which is 
their long suit) you gives them, erroneous, 
the bookays and the laurel wreaths — ^thereby 
robbing the Genuine, and joining yourself to 
the herd of the easily bluffed. I suppose that 
man is hable to make mistakes. Down in 
MacAlpine — since called Borax, because of the 
discoveries of that substance there, and now 
’most entirely a shovel-wielding centre intead of 
a cow-man’s towm — I had my first signs of the 
kind of person that there Diamond K foreman 
was, into whose clutches I rings not only myself, 
but you. I meets up with him first in Mac- 
Alpine City. With the advent of the pro- 
spector, boraxing, and copper hunting, and 
silver -lead people defacing the bosoms of Nature, 
the red-light houses in town manifests themselves 
beyond all reason. And the mayor sends to 
various of us that made MacAlpine, since then 
Borax, a letter — asking us to affix our names if 
we considers that the number of these dives be 
more restricted. I gets this missive and feels 
someway flattered — like as if it was one of these 
occurrences to write home back east about to my 
blood folks that thought I could never take no 
place as a responsible citizen and inform them 
casual, but whatever, about me being asked to 
affix my name to this here progressive document, 
as a token of my being of some account in the 
gregarious world, which is sure the only world 
they recognises as constitootional. Not that 
I’m pow^erful interested in the question one way 


298 


HANDS UP ! 

or another. I shows this letter to that foreman 
— George Washington Gay is his full name — and 
he frowns, and says : ‘ Oh, pshaw — ^there ain’t 

anything in this here. What’s he want round- 
robining the city for this -away ? ’ which, falling 
in with my live and let live ways, I kind of side- 
tracks, in my mind, the considering of whether 
I signs or not. ‘ He ain’t asked me to sign,’ he 
says, kind of speaking out mere meditations ; 
but I was meditating too — meditating side- 
trackin’ this here round robin, as I says, and 
pays little attention to his last remark. But 
that night I am kept awake with the sounds of 
mirth, and general debauched singing over at 
the red-light boxes ; and in the morning, 
lacking sleep, I considers that ‘ live and let 
live ’ cuts two ways — so I signs. The Mac- 
Alpine City Tribune , printed entire by the 
mayor, comes out Tuesdays. This here was 
Sunday night that the Diamond K man says 
there ain’t anything in the protest ; and on 
Tuesday the reputable citizens is projectin’ 
their names in cold print on behalf of MacAlpine 
City being some more a credit to modern 
civilisation, and shutting down these there red- 
light dives. And I see a name flaunting there — 
Washington Gay — ^which I wonders is this any 
friend to George Gay, who maybe sees different 
from his namesake, and also is asked to be a 
reputable citizen and tote in to the corral among 
the protestors ag’in the general kick-ups, and 
simultaneous playing of diverse music in neigh- 
bouring red-light houses. But it transpires that 


PETE DISCOURSES 299 

it is no other than plain George Gay — ^a-calling 
of himself by his middle name, putting on dog 
for the sake of The Mac Alpine City Tribune — 
being as it were ashamed of his first]^name. 
And it leaks out that he has no sooner wet- 
blanketed the round-robin protest proposition 
to me, than he pikes over to call on the mayor, 
and sets up the jig-juice to him, pours flattering 
words in his ears, and reckons that sooner or 
later the mayor mentions his notion for 
signatures. So he does. And friend Gay 
applauds so sincere that he is asked right there 
to affix his mark to the round robin. Thereafter 
the drink proposition lulls, and George Gay 
appears as Washington Gay in the column of 
selected reputable persons itchin’ for the better- 
ment of MacAlpine City — and I regrets seeing 
my name in such company ; but I crosses the 
paper where my name is, and posts it to my 
relatives, knowing they will think a whole lot 
of it. I notes also George Gay’s play, but 
makes no comment. Now I was a blame fool. 
Such indication was sufficient for any man, just 
as no man need go projectin’ around looking for 
the skunk once he has scented it. And any 
man who says that a scent of a skunk ain’t a 
vital matter, and only to be ignored, is surely 
going to be fooled. But me not being a man given 
to petty views, I continues amicable with Gay, 
and in course of time, me being amicable — for 
though a little thing shows you a man’s nature 
you don’t quarrel with him over it — he thinks he 
can play a game on me. This here game I 


300 HANDS UP ! 

omit from my tale, for I go sick at the thought 
of it. The more lenient and amicable you go 
with some cattle the more dog they put on. 

“ I excuses Washington Gay for his duplicious 
ways in that first play, and excuses his putting 
on dog. I see these here indications of the 
range he roams on ; and I goes on ignoring 
them. Then comes the split between us, but he 
takes on so bad about it that I feels remorse for 
leaving him out of my tab of friends that to 
meet is to treat, and putting him among the 
mere ‘ how-dos.’ Unable rightly to realise why 
he is wiped ofi, he mourns a whole lot, goes 
around town calling me a good fellow to every- 
body, till folks begin to think I’m some distant 
with one who esteems me so high, and takes the 
liberty of bringing us together — and there we 
are to be beheld, bellying up to the bar together 
again in the old way — ^which I does as a con- 
cession to public opinion. My son — ^never 
concess. 

“ I had sensed the smell of that skunk. I 
had surely seen his ear-marks, and I was to be 
shown him more thorough — shown his brand — 
when actually I knew all about him that time 
he pshaws away the moral document and then 
goes and runs his mark on it. Now, us bein’ 
friendly, he shuffles the cards for a fresh game — 
begins calling me down, not too severe, but 
allowing how he is disappointed some. On top 
of that he gets foreman of the Diamond K, and 
(to show he is still as friendly as ever) invites me 
up for roper to the outfit— which I accepts, and 


PETE DISCOURSES 301 

all the world beholds how me, who has esteemed 
him a shorthorn, has coals of fire on my head. 

“ So there I am roping. And he has his 
revenge on me for cutting him off my special 
intimates awhile back when he suggests that my 
roping ain’t what it was cracked up to be. He 
suggests this once, quiet — ^then again stronger — 
and so I does not let him turn the last card. 
Nor does I quarrel with him. It would seem 
plain enough to the most, but he is kind of dense 
that-aways, so I merely steps over and asks for 
my wages as I reckons to quit. ‘ Anything 
wrong ? ’ ” he says. 

“ ‘ Not the slightest,’ I says. 

“ ‘ What on earth is the trouble ? ’ he says. 

“ ‘ No trouble whatever,’ I says, and looks 
him fair and square — which him comprehending 
the many qualities in himself, at that glance, 
apart from any virtue in my bland gaze, the dog 
slides ofi him a whole lot for the brief space it 
takes me to tie up my blankets and tobaccer. 
But I am no sooner hitting out from the ranch 
than I see him swell up again, same as a horned 
toad. Looking at me for that spell he had been 
plain George Gay, scarce tolerable at that 
now, but not too pre -sumptions. When I de- 
parts he is once again Washington Gay, throwing 
the big bluff to men that know him better, till 
they comes to reckon, same as me, to accept the 
smell for the sight of a skunk — to take the 
evidence of ear-marks and not go cuttin’ into 
the herd, and looking at a brand for full and 
unnecessary confirmation. 


302 HANDS UP ! 

“ Which the moral is, same as in the female 
story I narrates — follow the promptings of your 
divine instincts. Yuma tells me that when he 
met up with Apache in Cheyenne, Apache has a 
remark about that foreman that he bears him 
a grudge for blabbing to the ’tecs, just after the 
hold-up, about you being maybe able to give 
some information, and that if it had come to 
anything he would have burnt the trail up to 
the Diamond K and sent George Washington 
Gay on the jump to the Golden Gates with a 
surprised look.” 

I had a sudden start then, and Pete and I — 
looking at each other across the fire, shared a 
thought. 

“ Oh he wouldn’t do nothing so foolish now,” 
said Pete, “ I guess what we hears of him 
being in the country is only scares — ^the way 
some folk talk of Injun trouble still, when 
Injuns is all mostly growing tomatoes, and 
growing alfalfa, and working on irrigating 
projects.” 

“ I hope so,” I said ; “ but from what I’ve 
seen of Apache he’s a brooder, and — ” 

“ Him ! Why he’s plumb full of sufficient for 
the day is the sport thereof — ^he don’t brood 
any.” 

“Not on the future,” I said; “that’s the 
trouble. On the past, at times, he does brood, I’m 
certain ; and then he wants to wipe out scores.” 

“ Oh that Diamond K man ain’t no account,” 
said Pete. “ The Apache Kid wouldn’t trouble 
about him serious.” 


CHAPTER XXVI 

THE OUTLAW BULL 

The new corral was built ; and at Sand Creek 
we had a new sub-camp, with Pete for boss. 
One day I was alone, and he and Yuma, with 
another man, were riding the creek-side “ look- 
ing ” the cattle for a bunch of beeves (for an 
order of Jules of Chicago, to be precise in this 
event), when I was aware, in the midst of my 
biscuit making, of a pounding of the ground far 
off, as when a herd has settled to a good gait and 
is moving the landscape behind it. 

Out I ran and saw the dust rising North West. 
The herd was on the run, and at the speed it 
travelled there would be difficulty in pulling it 
up for lining into the corral. You know what 
that may mean. I have worked a day (on one 
occasion), with a dozen other men, endeavouring 
to run a herd into a corral, and no — ^that corral 
had no interest for them. 

To run a herd easily into a corral you must 
get them bunched some way off, and string 
them, one at a time, in the way they head for 
water-holes, Indian file ; and then the corral 
does seem a desirable haven for them ; they 
have then no kick ” against going in. 

Next moment I saw that the three men were 
putting up a big endeavour to check that 
stampede. I saw the flash, flash of revolvers 
going off^ as they brought in the sound of their 
guns — fired in air — to help in the heading off. 


304 HANDS UP ! 

On to my horse I went, and curved away 
across to meet them, riding not too directly in 
face of the herd till I should see just how they 
shaped ; but first I let out not only the ordinary 
entrance to the corral, but a whole division of 
bars as well. It was a wild, and great, hour 
that, while the four of us headed and circled 
that herd. 

Then Pete, grimed and black with dust, 
breathing short, explained to me the excitement. 
An outlaw bull, that had dodged four round-ups, 
was in the herd, “ and it do seem a chance to 
bring him in at last. He is plumb in the centre. 
It would sure be a good omen for this here new 
camp to rope him in and get it to penetrate his 
bull mind that he belongs to the Triangle for 
sure, and ain’t just a gallivanterer.” 

And we got him into the corral. We ran the 
whole bunch in, and that black bull — who, if he 
had only known it, was in peril of his life, the 
boss really having outlaw^ed him, and said that 
if he acted wild much more he would have to be 
shot instead of creating further disturbance, and 
cutting into herds where he had no right. 
There he bellowed now, and kinged it in the 
herd, guileless of ear-marks, and bearing no 
brand. 

In we went to the large corral and began 
cutting out carefully, one by one, the rest of the 
herd. It was dark before w^e were through, 
and next day we were all awake early, eager and 
excited to complete the work. 

“ Which we signs on for torreador and bull- 


THE OUTLAW BULL 305 

fights in Mexico after we closes up this game,” 
said Yuma when, after a forenoon’s work, with 
casualties on our side of one pony gored, and 
Merry !Mike — the other man with us — ^grazed 
down his leg in an ugly fashion, the bull was 
alone, rampaging round the corral. 

Merry Mike was the one who rode over to the 
home ranch to tell the great tidings, and in- 
cidentally procure some liniment ; and there 
we waited, feeling that a good omen had visited 
the new corral. 

Next day Henry in person, with the foreman, 
rode over to admire his black majesty tossing 
his horns there and challenging the world. 
Henry, a curiously quiet and determined man, 
sat his horse, eyeing the outlaw bull, and then 
remarked gently : 

“ He goes in that bunch for Jules of Chicago — 
and God help the railway men.” 

Then we fell to to get a rope on the outlaw. 
He snapped two as if they had been pack-thread, 
getting away back with a bit of play on them, 
then running forward and slacking them, and 
next — before we could tighten up — dashing 
back, and snap ! the rope was broken. The 
third rope we hung to, and held him up ; but, 
infuriated, he charged us as if he would fain 
gore us between the bars. We took advan- 
tage of the charge to gather in the slack, 
wildly, and the foreman adroitly hitched the 
end to a bar — when, suddenly, back went the 
black king, and snap went rope three ! 

But after an hour or so we had him up close 

u 


306 HANDS UP ! 

to the bars, where he had no play, well roped, 
and close roped, hauled up tight to the bars 
and looking through at us. Then we went to 
eat flap -jacks and drink tea and consider what a 
great fighter was that outlaw bull. 

“ He’s like Apache Kid,” said Henry. 

“ Have you heard any more news of him, 
sir ? ” asked Pete. 

“ You heard the latest I suppose ? He has 
been all along from this ranch to that. No 
doubt he has been fed at outfits that say nothing ; 
but some have talked. They say he is locoed. 
It looks as if he had an idea of surely running 
amuk. He appears to-day at one outfit, riding 
up, asks a horse. He gets it. Asks a meal. 
He gets it. For he asks it sweetly and graciously 
— but with his rifle on his arm. The latest, so 
far as I know, is that he rode up to a sub-camp 
of the Y.Z. on Kettle River, and somebody 
there, not feeling either friendly or to be 
intimidated, put up a bluff on him, and gave 
him the glad hand, fed him, told him he could 
have as many horses as he wanted ; and then 
Apache camped down in his wickeup to sleep. 
Out went this fellow and pranced over to the 
home ranch, got up three of the boys — ^this 
Kettle River outfit having no sneaking regard 
for Apache — and back they came, making out 
to corral him, and carry him to that thousand 
dollar bid, still open I suppose. But there’s a 
little bit of scrub half way between the home 
ranch of the Y.Z. and this sub -camp, and as 
they came ploughing through there, Apache, 


307 


THE OUTLAW BULL 

who had either played possum for sheer devil- 
ment, or wakened up and tumbled — after this 
fellow piked out — and reckoned it was his long 
suit, though maybe they didn’t think so — well, 
Apache had ridden along and cached himself 
there in the scrub. Seeing the three coming 
sifting back he considered he held cards to make 
good — and whaled away on them. Down went 
two, and the other wheeled for home, with 
Apache after him till they struck the stage road. 
Then Apache quit.” 

There was a silence. 

“ That’s the latest news ? ” I asked. 

“ That’s the latest we have.” 

Pete looked up and sighed deeply. 

“ Not but what,” he said, “ there’s a kind of 
respect due to outlaw bulls ; ” and he rose and 
went out to stand ruefully, and meditatively, 
regarding the black outlaw hauled up tight, 
with his horns protruding, at the corral bars. 


CHAPTER XXVII 

AT THE PUEBLO WALL 

Yuma Bill rode off right away to order that 
the team of Montana drays be put in the heavy 
waggon, and driven over to the sub-camp ; and 
the rest of us, ignoring, for the time being, the 
black king, fell to work in the other corral 
driving out the not wanted, and holding back 
the bunch for Jules’s order. 

After moon -up, when we were through with 
that work, and the freed steers had moved away 
into space and disappeared, the steady plug-plug 
of the Montanas sounded, and the waggon came 
groaning in. Next morning that waggon came 
into play. It was backed up to the corral where 
the outlaw bull stood gazing between the bars, 
backed close up and then, after hitching new 
ropes around the bull, and tying them close to 
the tail of the waggon, we simply loosened the 
ropes that so far had held him, and withdrew 
the bar to which they had been tied. 

The corral was thus now open before him — 
but he was tied up close to the waggon. 

The teamster mounted. The men who were 
to drive the herd ki-yied it out, and spraddled 
it en route, and away they went, herd and 
beeves, in clouds of dust. Then the teamster 
shook his reins, and the Montanas pulled 
out. 

The bull bellowed defiance, and stiffened his 
legs ; but he had to go. To the Montanas, bred 
308 


AT THE PUEBLO WALL 309 

and raised for hauling, he was no weight at all. 
The waggon seemed little heavier to them than 
it had been on the previous night, when they 
came over with it light. 

But that black outlaw was game. He 
stiffened his legs and was simply pulled out. 
Nary walk ! He took not on step. He sagged 
back on the short ropes and was turned into a 
kind of animate plough. Henry rode behind. 
The foreman and Yuma and the rest had gone 
on with the herd, Yuma to go only as far as 
the home -ranch for some new ropes. Henry 
rode behind, and Pete and I were there too; 
for Henry, seeing how the bull was behaving, 
told us to accompany the waggon in case of 
being required, as the outlaw might get full 
mad, and be obstreperous, even there, cinched 
up as he was. 

So we rode at the waggon tail, and none of 
us liked it. The sense of victory began to fall 
dull as we noted the bull’s trail — a deep furrow 
between the furrows of the waggon -wheels. 
We rode behind, quiet, brooding. 

Then Pete said. 

“ What you remarks last night, Mr. Henry, 
about Apache Kid and this here outlaw bull, 
preys some on my nxind ; and if it’s all the same 
to you, me being mushy and soft that -a ways, I 
esteems it a favour if you allow that maybe 
I ain’t needed here, and I ambles on and rides 
wdth the herd.” 

“ Sure,” said Henry. “ I understand your 
sentiments ; but this^ bull has annoyed me 


310 HANDS UP ! 

considerably ; and I feel that I am getting even 
with him.” 

“Which I surely comprehends,” said Pete. 
“ A man can comprehend what he wouldn’t do 
himself — him not being whetted up by no 
personal taunts and reproaches, such as that 
bull throws at you personal these last four 
years,” and he rode on. 

But that bull kept on in his great fight. 

We came to the home ranch, where the herd 
had been held while the boys who were going on 
with it — ^to Lone Tree, not Black Kettle, a 
longer drive — had snatched a meal. We could 
see the dust of the herd ahead again. But 
there we halted, and when we halted the bull 
simply sagged down, as near prone as the ropes 
would allow. We thought it was the sudden 
stopping of the team that put him down so, he 
being braced against it all the way. But when 
he fell he merely lay panting, with rolling eyes, 
and distended neck. 

“ You go and eat,” said Henry abruptly and, 
for the first time in my calling, I found that my 
work had taken the wire edge ofi my appetite. 
I ate but little, for the hoofs of that bull were 
worn like nails by his determined drag — ^worn 
nearly to the fiesh by the friction of the trail ; 
and I kept seeing him as I ate ; and I was 
thinking of Apache Kid, and understanding 
Pete’s request to be let ofi standing -by at that 
waggon tail. 

When I tumbled out again I took the reins 
of my pony, and walked to the waggon to see 


AT THE PUEBLO WALL 311 

what my orders might be — whether to accom- 
pany the waggon further on, or what. Henry 
stood looking at the bull, it still prone. 

“ I reckon,” he said, “ that he is tender on the 
feet now, and if we loosen him, and let him get 
up, he will be amenable to reason and walk 
rationally into Lone Tree.” 

The teamster approached, and he and I 
loosened the ropes and let the bull free. Still 
he lay there. Henry took his quirt and, 
bending from the saddle, flailed his flanks — 
and the bull rose. There he stood, and Henry 
by him, considering. The teamster hauled the 
waggon aside, and I flicked the bull to urge him 
on ; but there he stood. 

And then we heard the teamster cry out an 
exclamation in the vernacular, and there came 
a whirl of dust, and a rush of a horseman, and a 
horse was pulled up beside us, pulled up sharp, 
and fell in the dust, dead, after two great sobbing 
gusts of breath that make the nostrils distend 
pathetically. The rider was on his feet, with 
wild eyes, his face covered with grit, and a gun 
in his hand. 

“ Give me a horse ! ” he cried, seeming to 
recognise no one. “ Lively ! A horse ! A 
horse — or I scatter your brains.” 

“All right ! All right, Apache!” cried Henry. 

“ All right, Apache ! ” I cried. 

“ A horse ! ” shouted Apache. “ Lively ! Or I 
eliminate this whole outfit. I have no use for 
humanity. Lacking what I want I simply wipe 
out the ” 


312 


HANDS UP ! 

“ All right ! Get a horse, you ! Get a 
horse ! We’re your friends here, Apache Kid.” 

“ Oh ! All right ! But I’ve heard that 
before.” 

“ Say — couldn’t you cache here ? Are they 
after you ? ” said Henry. 

“ Cache here ? WTiat’s this ? ” he looked 
round. “ Oh sure — ” , 

“ The Triangle ! Pueblo Wall ! Henry and 
St ell owners — I’m Henry. Here you are ! 
Here’s a horse right now ! But what’s the 
matter with caching here ? ” 

“ They’re too close.” 

“ We’ll say you rode through hell-bent — 
couldn’t do anything before you were through.” 

Apache breathed like a hard-ridden bronco. 

“ Give me a gun,” he said. “ I have rifled 
this blamed thing.” 

“ A gun ! A gun ! Get a gun ! See — my 
cartridge belt — hanging on the — yes.” 

“ Better do as Mr. Henry suggests, Apache,” 
I said, “ and cache here. We’ll swear you rode 
through hell-for-leather.” 

He pointed at his horse lying dead on the 
track. The man who had rushed in for Mr. 
Henry’s belt and gun dashed back, and held 
them out to Apache, who snatched them from 
him. 

“ By heck ! ” he said, “ I’m about all in. And 
here they come ! ” 

They did too. A great whirl of dust swept 
down on the ranch buildings. The pursuers 
were hot on Apache’s track. 


AT THE PUEBLO WALL 313 

He gave a great inward suck of breath through 
his nostrils, and his chin went out, and his head 
up ; he braced himself and seemed to grow 
inches — then dashed up from the waggon -track 
and stood with his back to the old Pueblo w^all. 

Down came the riders and wheeled, and the 
guns snapped. We saw Apache sag down on his 
knees. It looked as if he were praying, but, as 
we found later, both legs were shot. 

“ Not like that ! ” he screamed, and with a 
quick motion he flung liimself with his legs to 
right, supporting himself on his left hand, and 
then up with the right, and his gun spoke, and 
one of the riders went down. Again his revolver 
spoke, and another fell. 

It was too much for the Triangle boys. From 
the bunk house came a flash and a snap, a rifle 
snap. The Triangle had joined in with Apache. 
I had blood in my eyes. I pulled my gun, 
which I had worn all the while at the sub -camp, 
and flailed into the bunch of riders. Henry, 
who had dismounted, flopped on his belly to 
dodge the riders. 

There was a fusilade of shots — from the 
Triangle bunk house ; they rattled a tattoo. 

Henry shouted : 

“ Give me that gun — I’m your boss — I order 
you.” 

“ To hell with you ! ” I cried. 

He darted away. 

The dust of the riders slackened, and they 
threw ofl their horses and drew back, to fire 
standing behind their mounts. 


314 


HANDS UP ! 

“ All in ! All in ! Quit firing boys ! ” I 
heard a yell, and ceased whaling into the crowd 
of horsemen, and looked around to the Pueblo 
wall — ^to see Apache, legs still out to right, with 
head hanging down, and body folded forward, 
his gun hand stretched. 

The shots ceased. The dust fell. We looked 
from one to another. A man went over from 
the posse of Apache’s pursuers and looked down 
on him. That was the signal for full cessation 
of hostilities. 

Mr. Henry appeared again, our boys at his 
heels. The posse men came after their leader, 
who still stood by Apache. 

“ He’s dead,” said the leader. 

Yuma Bill stepped forward. 

“ Then take off your hat,” he said. 

There was a falling back of all from the Apache 
Kid, who lay there with his chin in the sand. 
There was a great silence. And in it that black 
bull held up his head and : 

“ Moo-o-o-o-o ! ” he moaned. 

Henry looked round. There stood the outlaw, 
with an inch, or less, of hoof, his head up, his 
neck distended. His head went down and he 
shook dust with his horns ; he pawed a hoof, 
but the bellow was of pain. 

“ God damn that outlaw bull ! ” said Mr. 
Henry with a breaking voice, and he stepped 
over to it. “ We release you,” he said, and 
marching up close blew out its brains and stood 
aside. 

“You can go home now — you fellows,” he 


AT THE PUEBLO WALL 315 

said, “ you who came around here raising hell 
on this ranch as if you were a Dalton gang 
curving down on us, as if you were going to hold 
up the outfit, so that you put us all on the shoot. 
You take off your dead men. I have none of 
them here. And you leave the Apache Kid. 
He lies at the Triangle — ^pending inquiries.” 

And the posse did as it was bid by Mr. Henry — 
and retired, Subdued ; and we carried in Apache 
and laid him on Henry’s cot. 

That was the end of Apache Kid as well as I 
can tell it ; and all I need say of him, lest I say 
too much, is that many a worse man has died 
in bed, with the wafer in his hand or a sky-scout 
* exhorting. 


CHAPTER XXVIII 

EPILOGUE 

My sorrow for the death of the Apache Kid, 
during the next few days, was a little balanced 
by a personal joy. For, so far from my uncle 
having ignored my letter to him, I received a 
reply — ^from my father. He was no longer 
bug-house, but as sound in his thought chambers 
as ever. My uncle had handed over my 
missive to him ; and, so full of joy was my 
father at hearing of me again, that he ended the 
letter he wrote by return, by saying that he had 
already booked his passage through to Black 
Kettle, and would be at New York by the time 
I was reading. 

He was surely as sane as any man I ever met ; 
and his first words to me, when he stepped from 
the car at Black Kettle, and I pranced up and 
held his hand, were : 

“ Is this Will ? Ah ! Will— Will ! I see you 
are a man ! ” 

If this seems an egotistical note to end upon, 
I would remind any possible objectors (one in a 
hundred, I hope), of the cry my father gave when 
he went loco ; and we don’t live so much for our 
own approval as for the approval of some one to 
whom we are attached. 

THE END 


THE BALLXNTYNE PRESS TAVISTOCK STREET COVERT GARDEN LONDON 


OTHER BOOKS BY FREDERICK NIVEN 


DEAD MEN’S BELLS 

MORNING POST : A romance as living and moving as any we 
have read for many a long dayd^ 

DAILY GRAPHIC : Introduces a character whom R, L. S. 
would not have been ashamed of inventing f 

P ALL MALL GA ZETTE : ** You feel the wind on your cheeks 
as you read^ and smell the sea and the heather f 

EYE-WITNESS : He has written a book in which we savour 
the immortalsT 

ABOVE YOUR HEADS 

PALL MALL GAZETTE : A book oj note . . . whose 
exceptional traits will claim decided recognition^ 

STANDARD: This volume . . . reaffirms what is already 

sufficiently known — that Mr, Niven is one of the most promising 
of our younger writers P 

A WILDERNESS OF MONKEYS 

OBSERVER : It has in it the rarest qualities^ a crusading 
spirit, a quixotic idealism, ... If it should seem that the book is 
overweighted with the sense of sex, we can only say that any such 
fault is more than balanced by its cleverness, humour and love of 
beautyP 

TELEGRAPH : An exceedingly interesting and indeed remark- 

able bookP 


MARTIN SECKER, NUMBER FIV^ JOHN STREET ADELPHI 


SOME PRESS OPINIONS OF 

CARNIVAL 

By COMPTON MACKENZIE 


PUNCH: 

“After reading a couple of pages I settled myself In my chair 
for a happy evening, and thenceforward the fascination of the 
book held me like a kind of enchantment. I despair, though, 
of being able to convey any idea of it in a few lines of criticism. 
... As for the style, I will only add that it gave me the same 
blissful feeling of security that one has in listening to a great 
musician. ... In the meantime, having recorded my delight in 
it, I shall put ‘ Carnival ’ upon the small and by no means 
crowded shelf that I reserve for ‘keeps.”' 

PALL MALL GAZETTE ; 

“The study of Jenny, a most fascinating heroine, reveals rare 
and penetrating insight into that baffling mystery, the heart of 
a girl, and in fine, ‘ Carnival ’ is among the striking literary 
triumphs of the season.” 

ATHENiEUM ; [From a column notice. 

“Mr. Mackenzie’s second novel amply fulfils the promise of 
his first. . . . Its first and great quality is originality. The 
originality of Mr. Mackenzie lies in his possession of an imagina- 
tion and a vision of life that are as peculiarly his own as a voice 
or a laugh, and that reflect themselves in a style which is that of 
no other writer. ... A prose full of beauty.” 

MORNING POST; 

“It certainly marks a big stride upwards in Mr. Mackenzie’s 
career as a novelist. It is a genuine achievement." 

OUTLOOK: 

“In these days of muddled literary evaluations, it is a small 
thing to say of a novel that it is a great novel ; but this we should 
say without hesitation of ‘ Carnival,’ that not only is it marked 
out to be the leading success of its own season, but to be read 
afterwards as none but the best books are read.” 


MARTIN SECKER, NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET, ADELPHI 


SOME PRESS OPINIONS OF « * « 

The Passionate Elopement 

By COMPTON MACKENZIE « « « 

WESTMINSTER GAZETTE: 

“Mr. Mackenzie’s book is a novel oi genre ^ and with infinite care and 
obvious love of detail has he set himself to paint a literary picture in 
the manner of Hog-arth. He is no imitator, he owes no thanks to any 
predecessor in the fashioning of his book. . . . Mr. Mackenzie recre- 
ates (the atmosphere) so admirably that it is no exaggeration to say 
that, thanks to his brilliant scene-painting, we shall gain an even more 
vivid appreciation of the work of his great forerunners. Lightly and 
vividly does Mr. Mackenzie sketch in his characters . . . but they do 
not on that account lack personality. Each of them is definitely and 
faithfully drawn, with sensibility, sympathy, and humour.” 

PALL MALL GAZETTE: 

“‘The Passionate Elopement’ is an attempt, and a most successful 
one, to reproduce the life at an inland spa in the days of hoops, sedan- 
chairs, powder, patches, and quadrille. The reproduction is perfect ; 
at the very first paragraph we feel transported a century and a half 
back into the past. ... It is seldom indeed that we read a first novel 
that is so excellent. . . . Those who like good writing and a faithful 
picture of the England of Sheridan’s day will find ‘The Passionate 
Elopement’ much to their taste.” 

MORNING POST: 

“The reader of ‘ The Passionate Elopement’ will have no hesitation in 
hailing its author, Mr. Compton Mackenzie, as a very promising re- 
cruit to the ranks of young novelists. It is a work of very real literary 
ability, and for a first novel unusual constructive powers. . . . Mr. 
Mackenzie is delicate in dialogue, imaginative in description.” 

TIMES ; 

“ We are grateful to him for wringing our hearts with the ‘ tears and 
laughter of spent joys.’ ” 

ENGLISH REVIEW: 

“All his characters are real and warm with life. ‘The Passionate 
Elopement’ should be read slowly, and followed from the smiles and 
extravagance of the opening chapters through many sounding and 
poetical passages, to the thrilling end of the Love Chase. The quiet 
irony of the close leaves one smiling, but with the wiser smile of 
Horace Ripple who meditates on the colours of life.” 

SPECTATOR: 

“As an essay in literary bravura the book is quite remarkable.” 
SUNDAY TIMES: 

“ Mr. Mackenzie has wrought an admirable piece of work, which has 
the daintiness of a piece of Dresden china and the polish of a poem by 
Mr. Austin Dobson.” 

GLASGOW NEWS: 

“ Fresh and faded, mocking yet passionate, compact of tinsel and gold 
is this little tragedy of a winter season in view of the pump room. . . . 
Through ft all, the old tale has a dainty, fluttering, unusual, and very 
real beauty.” 


MARTIN SECKER, NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET, ADELPHI 



MARTIN SECKER’S NOVELS 


By COMPTON MACKENZIE 

CARNIVAL 

SINISTER STREET 

THE PASSIONATE ELOPEMENT 

By OLIVER ONIONS 

WIDDERSHINS 

THE DEBIT ACCOUNT 

IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE EVIDENCE 

By FREDERICK NIVEN 

DEAD MEN’S BELLS 
ABOVE YOUR HEADS 
MY LADY PORCELAIN 
A WILDERNESS OF MONKEYS 

By LAURENCE NORTH 

IMPATIENT GRISELDA 

THE GOLIGHTLYS; FATHER & SON 

By CHRISTOPHER STONE 

LONE GARTH 


NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET ADELPHI 












